Munich
Review by Peter T. Chattaway | posted 12/23/2005
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Munich
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MPAA rating: R
(for strong graphic violence, some sexual content, nudity and language)
Genre: Historical, Thriller
Theater release:
December 23, 2005
by Universal Pictures
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Runtime: 2 hours 44 minutes
Cast: Eric Bana (Avner), Geoffrey Rush (Ephraim), Ciarán Hinds (Carl), Daniel Craig (Steve), Mathieu Kassovitz (Robert), Hanns Zischler (Hans), Marie-José;e Croze (Jeanette), Mathieu Amalric (Louis), Michael Lonsdale (Papa), Lynn Cohen (Golda Meir), Gila Almagor (Avner's Mother)
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Munich takes place about 30 years ago, but it may be the most urgent film Steven Spielberg has ever made. While Spielberg has made a few historical movies before, so far they have all concerned events that took place well before he was born, and it doesn't exactly require a whole lot of courage these days to say that slavery and the Holocaust were wrong. Munich, on the other hand, is the first to depict an event that occurred during Spielberg's own lifetime, the ramifications of which are still being felt, and debated, today.
The film begins in September 1972, when Palestinian terrorists captured and murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany. The initial violence as the terrorists break into the athletes' suites is blunt, and brutal. And when the authorities respond, they screw up royally; among other things, they have to call off a rescue mission when it turns out the movements of their snipers have been broadcast on TV, where the terrorists can see everything. In one scene, Spielberg puts his camera inside the room as a terrorist steps out onto a balcony, his image transmitted to a TV nearby the door—and there is a palpable tension between the archival video footage and the actor re-enacting it off to the side, just as there is a tension between our knowledge of what will happen and our hope that things might turn out differently (between fate and free will, as it were).
Mossad agent Avner (Eric Bana) and wife Daphna (Ayelet Zurer) celebrate the birth of their baby
The bulk of the film, however, takes place after the Olympics, when the Israeli government responds to the incident by sending a counter-terrorist team to Europe and other points around the Mediterranean to find and execute 11 Palestinian leaders. The film is based on George Jonas's book Vengeance—previously filmed in 1986 as the TV-movie Sword of Gideon—and it follows a Mossad agent known only as Avner (Eric Bana) as he leads four fellow agents on a mission that, ironically, requires them to think and act a little like terrorists themselves. Jonas's book, which relies heavily on Avner's memories of events that took place a decade or more before, has been the focus of much controversy itself, and it is beyond the scope of this review to say how accurate it is. For now, suffice to say that the screenplay, by playwright Tony Kushner (Angels in America), follows it fairly closely.
The mission begins when Avner, an agent with a pregnant wife, is summoned to the home of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen) and introduced to Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush), the Mossad chief who trains him and puts his team together. (Interestingly, Jonas's book claims that the current prime minister, Ariel Sharon, was also present at this meeting and a "hero" to Avner, but unless my ears blinked, the film leaves him out of this scene.) Avner is told he will have to resign from the agency, to become "officially unofficial," and he will have to leave Israel and his nascent family for months at a time, maybe even years. Despite being off the books, though, Avner will still have to produce receipts.
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