Small glimpses of genius fade under this average film

Rating: 5/10 (6 August 2006)

Steven Spielberg's Munich has been compared inaccurately with Schindler's List. I find a resemblance not with this masterpiece, but with one of the less remembered films of Spielberg: Amistad.
Why does Munich remind me of Amistad if Munich is the story of the revenge the Israeli government took after the Munich assassinations and Amistad is the story of a group of African slaves unjustly taken to America and their trial? Simply, because in both Spielberg shows how excellent and terrible he is.
Amistad has one of the best moments in Cinema History I've ever seen. Of course, I'm talking about the slaves' story told crudely as it is. Spielberg is terrific at these dramatic, overwhelming scenes. Still, the rest of Amistad is boring, pretentious and looks extremely false on screen. This is exactly the same problem Munich has.
There are two great scenes in Munich: The attack on Beirut and the different scenes of what happened at Munich. Spielberg creates memorable, crude scenes that don't let us even move. But the rest of Munich feels fake and pretentious. The dialogs sound extremely fake and overall most scenes are boring and confusing. Why? Because Spielberg is not at the small stuff: Give him tough, dramatic scenes, not two people speaking. Oh, and PLEASE...DON'T LET HIM DO ANOTHER LOVE SCENE. Munich's two love scenes are two of the worst I've ever seen.
Now, about the acting: Eric Bana can't act. His performance is ridiculous and predictable. Daniel Craig delivers a good performance but ultimately his character is shadowed by everything else on screen. Mainly because his character is poorly written. There were two fascinating performances on-screen in Munich, and neither of them got over 3 minutes of screen-time. I'm talking about Omar Metwally as Ali, an Arab terrorist and Lynn Cohen as Golda Meir, Israel's prime minister. Metwally's performance is subtle yet harsh, just what the whole movie tried to be.
I've already written about the screenplay and how it has fake dialogs. But, I haven't mentioned the screenplay's greatest fault that was accentuated by Spielberg's poor directing in most scenes: Contrary to popular belief, I thought the characters' feelings of guilt, regret and fear weren't showed correctly on screen. All you see is Avner (Eric Bana) ripping his bed and destroying his phone, but his feelings aren't shown correctly on screen.
So, in conclusion, Munich has genius scenes that are shadowed by the rest of the film.
** out of ****