Well-made, dishonest, and morally confused film

Rating: 2/10 (7 January 2006)

The movie, Munich, is Spielberg's attempt to preach his liberal philosophy. Sure he uses a disclaimer at the beginning of the film that it's "inspired by real events", what does that mean? Does that mean that it represents an accurate picture of what really happened? Not on your life.
In the first place, the title Munich is misleading. The film isn't about the murder of the Israeli Olympic team members who were held hostage and then brutally executed by terrorists. It doesn't hardly attempt to portray these victims as being innocent of any wrong-doing, let alone tell their story in a proper light or setting. Rather, it focuses on a theme of vengeance, and turns things around to make Israel the offender and the terrorists the victims.
In the second place, there are extreme liberties taken with the account of Israel's retribution. The movie is taken from the somewhat dubious 1984 book Vengeance by George Jonas. Jonas "based" his book on the tale of an Israeli who claimed to have been part of a clandestine hit squad who worked for the Mossad. However, Jonas wasn't the first choice as author of this tale. According to Time Magazine, the Israeli in question first offered this story to a writer named Rinker Buck. But when Buck checked up on the informant's story, it didn't hold up. Buck withdrew saying he couldn't write the book in good conscience because the informant was "changing his story daily".
Spielberg's level of truth for believing the merits of this story are obviously much lower that Buck's. Perhaps his disclaimer should've read "inspired by a sensationalized re-telling of embellished events". He goes on to corrupt the story further by having Golda Meir utter a slanderous and totally dishonest statement for her that "every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values". We're supposed to believe that she would've felt that eliminating murderous terrorists was somehow a betrayal of her values? What a load of crap. This statement is a fabrication of the film's liberal screenwriter and gay activist, Tony Kushner, who has previously given his view that establishing a state means "f*** people over".
Third, Spielberg's reasons for producing a less-than-accurate picture of these events isn't meant to merely provide moralizing comments on past events, but rather to give him a platform to comment on the current actions of our country. Spielberg's methods are far too shallow to hide his motives in this film. The film ends with his protagonist having left Israel, now standing juxtaposed with the World Trade Center behind him. The message here is the over-obvious liberal cry that "we brought this violence upon ourselves". How did we do this pre 911, you ask? By siding with Israel then, and by fighting back against terrorism today.
Spielberg has certainly become confused since making Schindler's List, hasn't he? He's been interviewed several times about the message of this film, and has routinely pontificated that, "a response to a response doesn't really solve anything. It just creates a perpetual motion machine". Yes, his opinion is that killing terrorists makes us as bad as the terrorists. Well, didn't killing Nazis make us as bad as Nazis then? This is the liberal war cry of pacifists, but it's never held up "under fire", so to speak.
If there's one thing that really bothers me, it's having to listen to overt moralizing by the morally conflicted. One the prime criticisms of the Jews of WWII is that as a group they didn't fight back. Now Spielberg criticizes them, and us, for fighting back. Well, which is it? He can't have it both ways. What he doesn't seem to realize is that diplomacy only works when you have the means to use force if it fails. It failed with Hitler, it failed with the PLO terrorists in Munich, and it failed miserably with Saddam.
Steven needs to get off his soapbox and wise up. He's only sleeping safely in this country tonight because our military is strong, and is able to confront and deter terrorists who would like to cut his precious Jewish head off given half a chance. Pacifistic sentiments are no deterrent, and don't reflect the reality of the world we live in. Perhaps Steven thinks Osama Bin Laden deserves a good talking to, but thankfully a majority of us would still rather see him join Hitler in receiving his just reward.
Spielberg is an example of how being a great filmmaker doesn't necessarily make your films great. This is a well-made, dishonest, and morally confused piece of garbage. Munich sucks.