Movie Review
Munich
Reviewed by Jamey Bradbury and Diana DeFazio
In an early scene in Steven Spielberg’s new three-hour action/drama, Munich, Avner (Eric Bana) levels his gun at the first of nine men he will eventually assassinate and demands, “Do you know why we are here?” Even if Avner’s target doesn’t, the audience does: The target is one of the men responsible for planning the 1972 abduction and murder of eleven Israeli athletes by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September at the Olympic games held that year in Munich. As an act of retaliation, the Israeli government handpicks a group of Mossad agents-Avner among them-to find and exterminate as many of the planners as possible. As he repeats his question-"Do you know why we are here?!"-those of us with long assassin movie experience can’t help but wince: Asking the target questions is a rookie mistake.
Avner, though, is no rookie, as we soon find out. Chosen to be the team leader for a five-man assassination squad, Avner quickly overcomes any squeamishness he may have had about trafficking in death, and becomes the cool, collected core of the group. As the five men methodically take down each person who had a hand in planning Munich, each man begins to question the justification for the killings. Their motivation is the idea of home: They are soldiers in a war to take back their homeland. But the question each man eventually asks is, “At what price?”
Curiously, Avner is the last man on the team to question the justification for killing the planners of Munich. Traditionally, the moral dilemma central to a film like Munich is grappled with by the main protagonist, but in this case Avner is convinced almost until the end of the film that his cause is just. He detonates bombs and fires his gun, and bodies fall in his path, but it is not until he and his fellow Mossad agents become the targets of revenge that he questions the futility of his actions. In a conversation at the end of the film with his Israeli government contact (Geoffrey Rush), he points out that although he has killed nine of their Palestinian enemies, nine more will take their places. In Munich, every act of violence begets another vengeful act; every slain enemy gives rise to another, often crueler, enemy.
Munich, by its very nature, requires scenes of violence and bloodshed. Perhaps Spielberg bought his fake blood in bulk, though, because he seems determined to use it all in this film. After three hours of blood-spattered walls and severed limbs dangling from ceilings, we left the theatre feeling pummeled. While the film was clearly supposed to make us question violence, it simultaneously glorified it. Some violence is required to convey the meaning of this film, and no one paying $9.25 to see a movie about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would expect to leave the theatre without seeing a bomb or two go off. But the subtler scenes of the film-the blood on the pillow of Avner’s “clean-up” man, Avner’s own frantic ransacking of his own room when he suspects he may be a target of revenge for the acts he’s committed-are far more powerful than most of the graphic scenes, and leave us asking the questions Spielberg wants us to ask.
Buried in this violent film, ultimately, is a message of nonviolence. By the end of the film, Avner cannot walk down the street with his young daughter without fearing that someone might be following him; he cannot make love to his wife without visions of the murdered Israeli athletes playing in his head. He has come to realize that his own participation in violence has not given him a safer home (in fact, he has moved his family away from Israel by the end of the film). But although the viewer understands that Avner’s enemy is also fighting for the idea of home, Avner himself cannot reach this understanding; for him, and for his countrymen, there is no getting beyond the ideology that makes Palestine an enemy.
Entertainment value:—stars
Meaning:—stars
Lack of gratuitous violence or sex:—stars
Lack of advertising:—stars
Overall quality:—stars
Emotional impact:—stars
(out of 4 stars)