Affecting, dramatic thriller with unbalanced point of view

Rating: 7/10 (21 September 2010)

"Munich" is Steven Spielberg's thriller about the Israeli act of reprisal against Palestinian assassins for the murder of 11 participants in Munich's Olympic Games of 1972. Or let's better say it is based on it. Most things in the movie were invented by Spielberg to create a thriller for cinema, and he was successful. It is a thrilling story about five men who fight for their country. Just to realize, that in the end they all made everything even worse. That is the message of the movie, and it is a good message: revenge doesn't help, but it makes the situation worse. But the movie has some problems with being unpolitical. Too often the Israelis are shown as the insentient evil killers and their Palestinian victims are people, who appear to be nice and not very cruel. After some time you have the feeling it is an anti-Israeli movie. OK, not really that drastically, but the balance is somehow missing. Furthermore I think it was not intelligent of Spielberg to choose an important historical event with strong political background for a thriller that ends up being not correct in its historical background. Together with the imbalanced presentation of Israelis and Palestinian people, it is dangerous for people who don't know what really happened in 1972. I think many people who saw that movie still believe that it was a correct movie and that the Israelis are the "evil" persons. And that is the big problem about this otherwise really great film. Movies about an event that really happened and which are of historical and political importance shouldn't be reduced to a thriller for entertainment, if they don't show the truth.
It was somehow hard to find an adequate conclusion for "Munich". I think the best I can say is: The movie is great, it is thrilling, sad and has a good message, BUT: Please read up the historical background before watching it, or at least don't take the movie to seriously in its correctness.