Hmmm....

Rating: 4/10 (3 March 2006)

I left the theatre moved in a peculiar way after seeing this film. Usually if a film is an hour and a half too long, edited in such a way that the director appears to have lost all interest in the story's momentum, and contains endless clichéd meetings between men in cafés I simply dismiss it in being rubbish. However, this is Spielberg we're talking about here! I have to believe he does everything for a reason, don't I? The film has good performances, I'll give it that, but the whole film has an air of 'been there, seen that,' offering nothing new on the subjects of terrorism, revenge, espionage or any other topic you'd like to affix to the piece. Spielberg's message seems to be: Terrorism is morally dubious and revenge is morally dubious too, which doesn't really fire up the imagination.
However, this isn't what I finally decided was my main problem with the film. You see, while Eric Bana et. all did a fine job bringing the characters to the screen I just couldn't connect with them. It's a brave move to make your protagonists men you can't really root for, being terrorists themselves and all, but the main reason I didn't care about them was fairly simple.
At the start of the movie Eric Bana's character is brought before the prime minister and set an assignment: to track down and kill those responsible for the Munich attack. He is given 24 hours to decide if he accepts or not. He is also warned repeatedly how dangerous this mission is. He accepts anyway. Now, I found it annoying that he spent the latter 3rd of the movie whining about how dangerous the mission had become. Grow some balls, dude! He seems to totally lose his cool the minute anything doesn't go according to plan, and you're left wondering why is he the team's leader (a topic that is brought up but washed over immediately).
I then spent the last hour and a half of the movie waiting for it to end but being forced to endure meeting after meeting, phone call after phone call hoping he would just tie a knot in his hankie and get on with his job! With tighter editing this could have been a masterpiece. As it is it's a humourless lecture on the cause and effect of revenge, dumbed down for 13 year olds.