A hit squad is sent to kill those involved with the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. | score 5 |
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Cast Eric Bana, Geoffrey Rush, Daniel Craig, Mathieu Kassovitz Director Steven Spielberg Screenwriter Tony Kushner, Eric Roth Country USA Rating / Running Time MA / 170 minutes Australian Release January 2006 Official Site (c) moviereview
2005
ABN 72 775 390 361 |
"There
is no peace at the end of this." Attesting to the futility of revenge murder,
it’s a statement as true of Mossad’s mission as it is of contemporary adventure
in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is the heart of Spielberg’s account of Israeli
athletes slain at the Munich Olympics – a notion that vengeance does not reap reward.
Accordingly his film has been slated by Palestinians, Israelis and
neo-conservatives alike who find unwelcome apology where they look for accountability. Compressing
the essence of the award-winning documentary One Day in September, Munich
is part action-thriller as it tells the story of a covert Israeli operation
to assassinate those behind the 1972 outrage. It is a grim, tightly wound story
that opens in a superbly edited frenzy which the rest of the film, as with Saving Private Ryan, is unable to
match. Flashbacks
inform the present as squad-leader Eric Bana unleashes a bloodbath of revenge. It’s
complicated because the men he and his group target refuse to fit stereotype. Since
they don’t behave like monsters, but like artists, parents and idealists who
regard their cause as righteous, should they be killed? Prime Minister Golda
Meir thinks so, declaring with her opponent’s rhetoric that “to get peace, we
must show them we’re strong”.. What
Munich makes clear is that
short-sighted revenge breeds its own insanity. As Bana’s team are picked off,
his escalating paranoia underlines this point. Is Munich an audacious apology for Palestinian terrorism or Israel’s
forceful vengeance? In fact, the audacity is to challenge the very notion of
retaliation. If only more filmmakers were courageous enough to bring these
ideas into mainstream cinema. // COLIN FRASER |