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Monday, February 20, 2006

Munich




















Official Munich Site
Crime/Drama/Thriller/Historical
Starring :Eric Bana, Daneil Craig, Geoffrey Rush
Rated R (for language, nudity, graphic violence)
Running Time: 164 Minutes
Released:December 23rd, 2005


3 Out Of 5 Bites


In the Munich Olympic Games of 1972, eleven Israeli Olympic team members were taken hostage and killed by Palestinian terrorists. Much of the drama was followed closely by ABC with live coverage of the murders and some of this footage is woven into the movie, with the familiar voice of Jim McKay reporting on the broadcasts.

Munich dives into the lives of an affable, five-man group of Israeli hit-men tasked with taking out the planners of the Palestinian Black September movement. This hit-and-run response team would follow leads to names supplied by Israeli intelligence and methodically kill them. The men are given fake identification and hefty bank accounts with which to carry out their retaliatory attacks.

The film chronicles the lives of these men together on this common goal, noting how the killing affects them through time. This perspective is primarily seen through former Mossad agent, Avner Kauffman (Eric "Hulk" Bana), who is really the lone "star" in the movie.

We see the group together for the first time over an exquisite, introductory dinner prepared by Bana. Eating together is an intimate endeavor and this is not a fact lost to mid-Eastern cultures. The effect is rather chilling when considering that casual intimacy and the bond that would be forged together under the unified goal of assassination over the coming weeks.

Whether ordinary, family-loving, devout or idiosyncratic, each in the five seek to engage our pathos in a way that would redirect us away from whether or not the Israeli response was warranted. Instead, it compels us to compare group's response to their own growing disdain of their violent ways to the current culture of violence and war in which we, the viewers, now live. They begin to fathom their doubts about their mission as the killing machine marches on, hunting down suspected Palestinian group planners. They are even suspicious of their informants and even one another to the extent of being relationally isolated, which proves to weaken not only their mission, but the resolve that fuels it.

Spielberg hasn't made a movie here that you'll "love" when you walk out of it. There aren't any really weak performances in Munich either, only murky confusion about the mission overall. How much is enough? To what extent will one go to achieve the goal of the state? Are the collateral sacrifices worth it? Sometimes the interaction between the men hint at addressing these questions and others, but this seems to aid us more than it does the movie itself.

Since killing is big governmental business these days, one will appreciate the turmoil displayed by the five men over the passage of time. To get there, one will have to endure a cascade of episodic violence and tension that seems to be designed to sway us from judging the Israeli response so that, in the end, we are left holding the final, internal struggle Avner has in contemplating whether or not life can proceed after the killings. His character is the deepest study in the move from self-assurance to doubt.

Munich acknowledges that terrorism is the new war fought with innovative and unconventional ways in rapidly changing political landscapes. This much, the viewer will grasp. To its detriment, we lose a handle on the clarity of moral obligations of the state politic in its responses to not only this event, but future ones. This ambiguity in the film may more reflect an actual one at present. Which state or individual acting on its behalf is more "right" in their offensive and/or defensive behaviors that support their respective causes? Is the answer simply relative to the frame reference? Whatever the cause for this ambiguity, be it by will or by circumstance, it is still the choices we make that mould us as individuals and nations and each of these choices can irrevocably affect us or someone else down the line.

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