Not Spielberg's best piece.

Rating: 7/10 (27 June 2006)

While the first half of this movie is simply magnificent, and keeps your heart rate at all time high, by the end of the second half, you're ready for the film to be over. The last half of the film is slow, and boring. It really covers too much information, that we could have surmised on our own without having to be shown or told.
Spielberg always captivates audiences, and you might find that since this is also a film based on true events, it's very similar to 'Catch Me If You Can', which he filmed in 2002. Not that the stories are similar at all, but the way it's filmed, is in a lot of ways, almost exactly the same.
I was so impressed however, with the cinematography and how Spielberg was able to make it look like it was actually filmed in the 1970s.
If you don't know the story, you might get confused at times. I knew the story going into the film, and I was still confused. It's not the best Spielberg film for two reasons. That's one, and the other is that it's far too long. Like most of his films, he likes to take his time setting up the story before he gets into the actual movie, however, sometimes that's not always necessary. Sometimes, you can have a great film without going into a lot of detail. We're not reading a book here. This is a visual art form of story-telling, and so sometimes small details are not always necessary.
Eric Bana was excellent, and he resembled Christian Bale so much in this film, at times I thought it was the 'Batman' actor. All of the actors in the film were great, especially the team that's sent to assassinate the assassinators. A little bit of life's ironies are thrown into play, which also makes the film that much more realistic, as well as the times when you don't know exactly what's going to happen, to whom, or when.
There were times of pure tension, and other times of pure boredom. But, I think it works well for the most part, and I thoroughly enjoyed the film (at least the first half), and I would definitely recommend it to those who want to see what really happened in 1972-73. It's an amazing story. And, it just goes to show what people do to back their own.