An Almost Great film

Rating: 6/10 (29 January 2006)

I was fourteen at the time of the Munich Massacre,followed the events closely, and have been interested ever since.The raw materials for a great film maker, and film, are all here:hate, fear, revenge, plotting, treachery and intrigue - Shakespeare would have loved to have had a go! Munich works best in providing snapshots of the assassins and their victims.The piano playing daughter of the Paris "hit", the lover in bed with one of the Beirut "hits", and the joy, then despair, of the families of the Munich hostages are all wonderful vignettes.
The criticism from both Palestinian and Jewish supporters reflects a tremendous story telling discipline from Spielberg.However for a long film, some essential original detail was omitted which would have added to the drama.Before each "hit", in reality,the widow of one of the Munich victims was "tipped off" to watch the news by an anonymous caller.This complicity of Mossad and the Israeli Government in each assassination was ducked in the film apart from the implicit cooperation demonstrated in the Beirut raid.Was Spielberg too deferential to the Jewish lobby in this respect?
Equally,the spineless capitulation of the West German Government in releasing the three captured Munich Terrorists following a high jacking was referred to as an incidental. In reality, this was the real driver for revenge with those three top of the wanted list.The neutral portrayal of the Arab victims consequently evokes a sympathy which does not do justice to the motivation for the assassins actions.
I squirmed when the opening shots for Paris and London were the Eifel Tower and a red double decker bus.Audiences don't need that insult.As a Brit, the "Twin Towers" shot at the end on the New York horizon totally passed me by until I read the reviews.
The last quarter of the film is a mess.A failed "hit" appears, then ends without explanation or reason.The real life assassination of the wrong man in Norway is omitted altogether, even though this was the catalyst for the end of the killing programme. So anxious is Spielberg to sit on the moral fence that he concentrates on the personal moral confusion of the chief assassin rather than the bigger moral picture.
Ultimately, that is what limits the film. Great drama examines Great Moral issues by using personal drama to highlight them. Spielberg has done the personal moral drama well, but just holds back from the big picture.A fine, but flawed, effort.