Spielberg Strikes a Balance

Rating: 9/10 (3 February 2006)

Just before I watched Steven Spielberg's Munich, there was a documentary on Channel 4 that followed the first half of the movie almost shot for shot. Apart from allowing me to brush up on my distinctly hazy knowledge of the Arab-Israeli conflict, this also provided a clear lesson in distinguishing between political history and intelligent film-making.
And, yes, there are discrepancies in the two accounts. Of course there are. But even assuming the documentary was rooted firmly in fact (and remember, it WAS on Channel 4  never an organisation to favour balanced reporting over controversial muck-raking), I would suggest that Munich is close enough to the truth to discredit the nay-sayers and educate the neutrals without compromising its entertainment remit.
Set in the immediate aftermath of the 1972 Olympic Games hostage crisis, the film charts the Israeli response to Palestinian terrorism. Keen to eliminate members of the Black September group who carried out the atrocity but equally reluctant to outrage the international community, Security Service agency Mossad employs a secret hit squad to do its dirty work and then distances itself from the whole operation.
The team is led by Avner (Eric Bana), the son of an Israeli hero, and contains an eclectic bunch of bomb-makers, fixers and heavies. And it is here that the film starts to distance itself from fact (or at least the documentary). Spielberg humanises his hit squad. They are fallible and conscience-driven and a world away from the unapologetic, bristling assassins depicted in the Channel 4 film where surviving members are interviewed and come across more in the traditional mould - their faces in shadow, but their distaste for the enemy very much apparent. Only Daniel Craig's brawny South African mercenary comes anywhere near the clinical coldness of these testimonies, but Avner and the others are perpetually questioning their motivation.
Spielberg purposefully omits any personal links between the innocent athletes cut down in Munich and those who seek retribution. There are no tearful widows or blinking, wide-eyed orphans. Avner and his team are not on a vendetta  they are merely following orders. Himself Jewish, Spielberg never glosses over the shady nature of Israel's response to the kidnappings, but he doesn't side with the Palestinians either. The terrorists are shown as brutal chancers and the other victims of the hit squad are simply targets, not martyrs.
If you look past the challenging material, this is intense human drama, perfectly captured by Bana's superb depiction of a patriot torn between his family and his country. Despite the risk of melodrama in the scenes where he justifies his job to his wife, he is strong enough to carry Spielberg's intrinsic message that conflict of this nature is futile: Victims will simply be replaced and the cycle of violence is endless.
There are some annoyances  The squad moves from inept amateurism to polished assassination machine in the time it takes to pepper an elderly gentleman with bullets in a Rome elevator shaft  but one cannot really fault the casting, especially, the spellbinding Ciaran Hinds who has gone from ham-actor extraordinaire in the bloated TV series Rome, to this terrifically controlled performance as "cleaner" Carl. Geoffrey Rush and Michael Lonsdale round off a mature ensemble and, despite the nature of the film, the violence and the gun-toting, the emphasis is not on gung-ho action, but on its consequences.
You cannot make a film like this without accusations of bias or glib preaching, but Spielberg has managed to counter these with a balanced, dignified endorsement of peace. That he has also made an enormously entertaining and challenging movie is a considerable achievement.
9/10