Spielberg's 'Munich' flawed but thought-provoking

Rating: 7/10 (16 December 2005)

Director Steven Spielberg is probably going to take heat from both the Palestinians and Israelis for his latest film, a retelling of the events following the hostage tragedy at the 1972 Olympics in West Germany.
He'll take much more from the Israeli side, I'll wager, as many may see this effort as more of an attack on that state's handing of the terrorist problem, and equating its efforts as just as bad as the original crimes committed against it. But being Jewish, perhaps Spielberg has a better angle on the issue.
It is nevertheless a hard-hitting, uncompromising look at how Isreal's secret service (Mossad) dealt with the members of the Black September group which kidnapped and ultimately murdered nine Jewish hostages during the '72 games in Munich.
Eric Bana ("Troy" "The Hulk") is Avner Kauffman, the reluctant army officer forced to go undercover in Europe to exterminate (with extreme prejudice) 11 Arabs thought to be associated with the Black September organization. He is personally asked to take this mission upon himself by none other than Israeli Prime Minister Golda Mier (Lynn Cohen, "The Station Agent"). He even leaves his pregnant wife, Ayelet July Zurer, behind for love of country  or vengeance.
Like Brian DePalma's "The Untouchables," (in which good men break laws to get bad ones) we then meet this group of "good guys" which will aid Kauffman in carrying out the plan; the macho Daniel Craig ("The Jacket," as well as the newest James Bond), nerdy Mathieu Kossovitz, uptight Ciaran Hinds and middle-aged Hanns Zischler. On the surface, it would seem that none of these men could carry out the mission given to them. One is an antique dealer, another is an account and one makes dolls.
When the time comes for action, however, each knows his job and  for the most part  they know what they're doing. At first. The inaugural hit is an elderly Palestinian author who has just translated "The 1001 Arabian Nights" into Italian. He is shot several times in his Rome apartment building, and while Kauffman initially feels guilt over the slaying, he soon learns to kill without much thought.
The clan then begins to run into problems, one bomb is too weak to kill its intended victim; while another blows the front of a hotel out. A sloppy shootout in Athens gets the Russians involved and secret information leads to a deadly firefight in Beruit between Palestinian terrorists and the Israeli Army.
Meanwhile, to get information (whether it's good intelligence or bad, we do not know), Kauffman & Co. are forced to rely on a duplicitous Frenchman, Louie (Mathieu Amalric) for millions of dollars. They also have to deal with the CIA, which seems intent on protecting some of the terrorists.
Failing to get one of the bigger fish, and after losing three of the group, the mission is called off by Kauffman's superior, Geoffrey Rush ("Shine"), while Kauffman wonders what good it did. "For every one we eliminated," he says, "six more take their place - and they are worse." Spielberg's point is well-taken. The hostage murders only galvanized the Israelis, while their retaliations only galvanized the Palestinians. It seems a lose-lose proposition all around and it's still going on in the Middle East today.
Spielberg does a fine job of directing this rather low-key, matter-of-fact melodrama that tries a bit too much to be fair and balanced, while costumes and set design accurately reflect the film's early 1973 time period. The final crawl indicates that most of the bigwigs in the Munich murders escaped immediate detection (sheltered by the Russians or hid in Arab countries), but most were eventually tracked down. Kauffman's victims, however, seemed to be minor characters, if even that.
The major flaw was that it was about 15-20 minutes too long. Time is wasted on unnecessary narrative while the movie teases us with at least three endings. All in all, though, it is thought-provoking and certainly one which will be talked about for a while, at least.