Much too long for the message it delivers

Rating: 6/10 (29 December 2005)

This movie is interesting enough, but are we afraid to edit, just because it's Spielberg? This is little more than a string of brutal assassinations, beginning with the first one in Munich. The acting is superb, the directing is too, but after a while, it's too much work for too little payoff. "Munich" is a quasi-documentary without supplying the historical background that a good documentary would include. I give Spielberg credit for some thought-provoking dislodge, but it's mixed in with gratuitous sex (and I usually like a certain amount of sex in a movie), gratuitous violence, and corn-ball dislodge. The movie just never really grabbed my heart.
Maybe the highly visible director/producer doesn't want to repeat Salmon Rushdie's exile and so he softened his message. This could have been another "Schindler's List", but it feels like the movie's editor didn't cut anything. (Was there even an editor involved?) I ended by not caring about anyone in the movie. There is not one truly sympathetic character.
Where are all the great end-of-the year movies?