Obvious Drama with Very Little Impact

Rating: 6/10 (2 January 2006)

At the beginning of his career, Steven Spielberg had an almost perverse desire to entertain his audiences. As a result, we were spellbound by his movies. Then he decided that he was going to make movies that were "good" for people, and he produced dreadful stuff like "Amistad." Lately, he's been trying to merge the two approaches to storytelling, and his movies have suffered for it. His pure entertainments, like "War of the Worlds," haven't been particularly entertaining, and his message movies, like "Saving Private Ryan," have been short on message.
"Munich" is further proof that Spielberg is just not an especially intelligent director. He wants to thrill us with a cloak and dagger story even while he's preaching to us. The problem is this: the thriller parts of "Munich" undercut the seriousness of the topic, yet they're the only really entertaining moments of the film. Tony Kushner has written a clunky screenplay that jars to a halt every twenty minutes or so to discuss the moral crisis at the center of the movie as if we've been invited to sit in on a civics class, rather than letting the crisis evolve naturally from the material or allowing the audience to do any of the work for itself, which it is entirely capable of doing. And the action movie sections, while admittedly exciting, are manipulative and reek of classic Spielberg. He just can't resist the pull of emotional bombast and resorts to cheap tricks in order to build suspense. For instance, in a scene in which the team of Israeli assassins has rigged one of their target's phones to blow up when it is answered, he goes out of his way to introduce a child into the scene to heighten the tension; however, Spielberg is so predictable that we know a child will never die so aimlessly in one of his films. A truly original director would have made that scene suspenseful without pandering to our base emotions. And late in the film, during a scene in which Avner, the lead assassin, is making love to his wife while images of what happened to the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics flash through his head, Spielberg's histrionics derail the movie altogether into pure camp. Never mind that Avner couldn't possibly be remembering what happened since he never actually witnessed the events in the first place--at a moment when the film should be gripping, it's instead ridiculous.
The movie has a terrific look, and reminded me of those gritty paranoid films from the early seventies, like "The French Connection" and "The Conversation." Indeed, the look of the film and the skill with which it's put together will give people the illusion that's it a more important film than it really is, and will likely get it nominated for a buttload of Oscars. But in a year of such great movies that have already covered much of the same ground, "Munich" seems even further away from being an important film than it might in a more mediocre year. "A History of Violence" pretty much had the final word on the cyclical nature of violence and how it eventually degrades human morality; and Steven Gaghan showed with "Syriana" that a political thriller can be intelligent and exciting all at the same time.
I was impressed with Eric Bana, mostly because I've only seen him in "Hulk" and "Troy" and since those two movies don't comprise the world's most stunning acting resume, I was pleasantly surprised that he has quite a bit of skill. One senses that he didn't need Spielberg and company to stop the proceedings for the periodic lectures they wedge into the film; he could have done just fine on his own. And no other actors really get much of a chance to develop characters we care about, which has always been and probably always will be a weakness in any Spielberg movie.
I'm not Jewish or Palestinian, so I think I can speak pretty objectively to the fairness with which Spielberg approaches the topic. He makes an admirable attempt to address both sides, but the film's sympathies obviously lie with the Jews, and there a few moments when it takes on a self-righteous tone that threatens to tip the balance. However, Spielberg is Jewish, so I could easily excuse this.
There's a haunting, powerful film to be made from the events detailed in this film, but "Munich" isn't it.
Grade: B-