Bombs and bullets can kill, but they never hurt as much as the truth...

Rating: 9/10 (20 January 2017)

Avner (Eric Bana) is a former bodyguard assigned to lead the killings of eleven men for their involvement in the Munich attacks. There's no contract because the mission doesn't "exist" which means that it will be taken care of, with Israel's 100% efficiency. And while it will profoundly affect the executioner, this is not a character study, unless you consider the psychological mindset of a whole country as a 'character'.
First, I had mixed feelings regarding "Munich", but they all converged toward a positive appreciation. If there is one thing "Munich" ever proves is that Spielberg, while flawed as any human being, is a man of peace, and while it became trendy to support war and attacks in the name of patriotism, it is even more admirable to question it in the same spirit. "Munich" would be attacked on both sides, but as Spielberg pointed out, being attacked doesn't mean "being contradicted".
The title refers to the hi-jacking of Israeli athletes by PLO members during the Olympic Games of 1972 and what a sneaky irony that it had to be in Germany, as if history wanted to repeat itself. The operation ended in tragedy, as eleven athletes died, to the world's shock. It was a time where Palestinians had already lost the 'communication battle'. Things would change in 1987 with the first Intifada, when kids throwing stones at Israeli tanks replaced hooded terrorists holding machine-guns, thus contributing to the first 'change of heart' in favor of the Palestinians.
But in 1972, Israel was the offended country. The film is based on George Jonas' book "Vengeance" chronicling the targeted assassinations against Palestinian dignitaries accused of having pulled some of the strings that lead to 'Black September': eleven men, for eleven athletes, an "eye for an eye" move Golda Meir took all responsibility for. She personally believed that there was no time for peace. Why wouldn't they put these men on trial like Eichmann, who did far worse? Eichmann was arrested at a time where Nazism was terminated, and the new evil from the Israeli perspective was the Arabs, as long as these influential people lived, Israeli would die.
What I admired in the film is that it doesn't only discuss the victims' actual responsibility in the Munich attacks but even the sheer value of their deaths, because each one brings more ruthless successors, perpetuating a never-ending cycle of violence. I expected the movie to open with the blood bath that triggered the whole chain of events, but this was ignoring what a master storyteller Spielberg is. He punctuates the film with elements of that fateful night as violent interludes reminding the viewers why Meir took that decision, the climax coinciding with the killings. But this is not manipulation, as one could accuse Spielberg of. The point is that violence is ugly and blind.
Spielberg depicts each assassination with a Hitchcockian attention for details, one of them involves a bomb trapped in a phone and the biggest suspense comes when a little girl is about to answer the phone instead of her father. But for all the thrills the film provides, what struck me is the way the targets, or at least the first ones, are depicted as 'harmless' people, even sympathetic: one is an Italian-speaking poet and had just finished to translate the Arabian Nights in Italian, he's an intellectual and his involvement in Munich events has been denied, another one is a doctor and a family man, when he's interviewed, he insists that many camps were bombarded by Israel (which means that there are already people who paid the price for Munich).
It seems crucial for Spielberg to shows shades of innocence in the victims or at least be indirectly vocal about the Palestinian pleas, and never without really discrediting them, and it actually pays off. When a Palestinian says that they use violence like Israel does, it also means killing innocents, it indirectly provides alibis for the target assassinations as the men killed are still less innocent than civilians. And when a PLO member discusses with Avner about the Nazi guilt, I felt this was the director of "Schindler's List" reminding the audience that no matter what they think about Jews and Arabs, it is a war for a land, not some extermination project.
Now, to say that Spielberg sided with Palestinians would be too much of a stretch, but the point the screenplay (the book was adapted by Eric Roth an Tony Kuschner) is that violence can't be the solution to the problems it causes. And even at the end, when most of the men are eliminated, there's no real satisfaction or overwhelming effect, it is just about a job that had to be "done", it could have been unfair, but there's a key scene where Avner's mother says that "Israel had to be 'taken' because no one would have given it anyway'. At least, both sides would agree on that.
Served by a great cast: Eric Bana, Geoffrey Rush, Daniel Craig and Mathieu Kassovitz "Munich" explores the dark corners one country could be driven into, in order to "make a point", and it is very fitting that there's a part played by Michael Lionsdale because he starred in my favorite political thriller "The Day of the Jackal", and "Munich" is perhaps the closest that come to that level of documentary-like gritty realism. I didn't need to wish De Gaulle's death to somewhat 'root' for the Jackal, so I guess even an Arab could be fascinated by the level of organization put to avenge eleven athletes.
Maybe admitting that there's a lot to learn from the 'other side' can be a first step toward a reconciliation, but one of the tragedies Arab people must deal with, is that there's no Spielberg's counterpart in the Arab world, to the point that it took a Spielberg film so people could hear their voices.