A Thriller with a Vital Moral Dimension
Added 12/29/2009
"Munich" (2005) is a powerful, well-acted, very suspenseful film by Steven Spielberg about retribution and the stressful toll it can exact on those practicing it. In 1972 at the Munich Olympics eleven Israeli athletes were brutally slaughtered by eight Palestinian terrorists. Israel in retaliation began a campaign to hunt down and kill the eleven people who were believed to have planned the attack. As a result of the Israeli plan hundreds may have died in retaliatory actions.
In the final scenes of the movie two characters are talking, and in the background can be seen standing proudly the World Trade Center before the horrific attack of September 11, 2001. After that event the United States began a campaign of retribution that caused the deaths of thousands, and as of yet the masterminds of the attack have not been found or punished.
The movie deals with the grim realities of the Munich tragedy and its aftermath. Golda Meier, the Israeli prime minister, selects one man, Avner (actor Eric Bana) to head a five man team to kill the responsible parties. The movie painstakingly traces the team's attempts to kill off the planners. Each member of the team comes across as a real person, each brave and resourceful. Daniel Craig portrays one of the team members.
Avner is a decent man whose conscience gets to him: he cracks under the stress because of the moral dilemma he's been encased in. He's haunted by the blood bath unleashed in Munich and the retaliation under his leadership.
From the standpoint of being a thriller, this is an extremely well-developed film aside from its moral and political implications. The masterful sense of timing, the cinematography, the characterization, the casting, the narrative velocity, the intensity of the action - all contribute to catch your attention and hold it. The scenes of the hostage-taking and the brutal airport violence, like newsreel footage, are not shown all at once. They come at you at different times in the movie making it a gripping experience.
John Le Carre and Graham Greene in their thrillers almost always dealt with the moral dimension of the situation, and this move is powerful because it is much more than a thriller; it deals with the moral consequences of actions and reactions.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Bana Makes a Strong Argument......
Added 12/16/2009
......For Dullest Actor on the Planet. He leads a cast of no-name nobodies in this immensely unbelievable movie. If you can watch past the ridiculous shootout at an hour and 16 minutes, give yourself a pat on the back. With so many liberties taken with history, it's ashame this travesty was even made. Dialogue rarely rings true, and characters never seem to develop any sort of rapport or even a hint of a personality. A tragedy that should've translated into a riveting movie just bored me to tears, and my eyes rolled back into my skull so many times I am permanently cross-eyed. Good shots of cities around the globe, and for capturing the look and feel of the early 70's, cudos. Otherwise, a shameful mess.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Gripping but depressing
Added 12/6/2009
I hadn't previously investigated Munich and its aftermath, so I can't judge the accuracy of this movie. But that doesn't matter, for three reasons: (a) perhaps no one outside the world of espionage knows what really happened, (b) the movie is self-described as only "inspired by" real events, and (c) what matters is the broader message, not the details.
And that broader message is quite obvious, indeed commonplace, if you can rise above a strongly partisan viewpoint. The message is that when two distinct and clannish groups desperately want the same piece of land as their home, and neither group can eliminate the other, conflict and violence will tend to be perpetuated, resulting in a lose-lose outcome. At the same time, there's some hope of compromise and peace if each group comes to recognize the faults in its own ideology and actions, appreciates that the other side isn't entirely wrong, and recognizes a shared humanity. So there are two tensions operating in parallel: (a) between the two groups, and (b) within each group, between making concessions in order to compromise versus continuing to fight (at whatever mutual cost) until the other group has been utterly defeated. At a more specific level, a related message is that assassinations and terrorism may keep pressure on the other side, but they ultimately only contribute to perpetuating the conflict rather than resolving it.
The movie depicts all of this quite clearly, and thereby does a service in helping us better understand the problem. At nearly 3 hours, it's quite long, but it kept my attention, so I didn't mind. As some reviewers have noted (ignore the extremists), it isn't a perfect movie (hence my 4-star rating), but I still recommend it to people who want to better understand why these types of conflicts are so difficult to resolve.
Finally, here's my proposed solution to the problem. Forget about the current Palestinian territories and instead give the northmost third of Israel to the Palestinians. Provide the Palestinians with quality infrastructure, fully cover their relocation costs, and provide them with plenty of seed money, all of this paid for by Israel and international aid. Help the Palestinians establish a credible democratic government with adequate military backing. Last but not least, place Jerusalem under UN control, with everyone having guaranteed safe access to it, including a dedicated highway from the new Palestine to Jerusalem. That's all it takes: allow each group to continue to exist, physically seperate the two groups, allow each group to have quality land within the current territory, and throw some money at the problem where needed. Can we please implement this solution soon, so that everyone can move on to other issues?
2 out of 2 people found this helpful.
|
america's critic
Added 9/11/2009
story was confusing i felt lost the entire time not much action -- this was a waste i dont reccomend this 1.
2 out of 9 people found this helpful.
|
Just Saw the Film a second Time
Added 8/20/2009
It is a well done film and has many aspects of the story that create great suspense, intrigue, and self questioning. My issues with the film are few but important. For instance, I am disappointed by the way in which the director creates a tie in at the end between Avner making love to his wife in Brooklyn, and the final bloody shoot out between the PLO hostage terrorists and the German police interjected in between the humping and slobbering. Eric Bana's character feels guilty and his catharsis from guilt comes from the semi violent act of making love to his wife??? Quite ridiculous and far fetched in my opinion, and clearly the only quick and easy way out of the film for the director which is running long 164 minutes, and lacking a clean, happy and realistic ending. With notable exceptions, Spielberg often leans toward unrealistic happy endings. However since he is dealing with a real story, perhaps a real ending could have been more important for the sense of reality that the film attempts to capture. In the end, his own government disappoints him when he questions the policy of going after the terrorists in the same terrorist manner that they have experienced.
One other issue has to do with the story itself. It seems pretty unbelievable that after the French informants have put them in a safe house in Greece with the Palestinian terrorists - and somehow surviving, that Avner and his associates continue to trust the informants despite being set-up by them.
Overall an important film about story that has received a lot of press but one which has put little scrutiny on the German government and people for the lousy handling of the Munich massacre that reads almost like a "how not to handle a hostage crisis". When considering the history of Germany and the jewish people, how can one not point the finger at the German government and police for their ineptitude in creating a shoot out in which no hostages were left alive. Then a few weeks later how quickly the spineless German government chose to extricate themselves from the mess they created in the first pace thru their poor security at the Munich games by deciding to hand over the 3 remaining captured terrorists to the Libyans in exchange for 12 Germans whose plane was hijacked in the middle east.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
A Thriller with a Vital Moral Dimension
Added 12/29/2009
"Munich" (2005) is a powerful, well-acted, very suspenseful film by Steven Spielberg about retribution and the stressful toll it can exact on those practicing it. In 1972 at the Munich Olympics eleven Israeli athletes were brutally slaughtered by eight Palestinian terrorists. Israel in retaliation began a campaign to hunt down and kill the eleven people who were believed to have planned the attack. As a result of the Israeli plan hundreds may have died in retaliatory actions.
In the final scenes of the movie two characters are talking, and in the background can be seen standing proudly the World Trade Center before the horrific attack of September 11, 2001. After that event the United States began a campaign of retribution that caused the deaths of thousands, and as of yet the masterminds of the attack have not been found or punished.
The movie deals with the grim realities of the Munich tragedy and its aftermath. Golda Meier, the Israeli prime minister, selects one man, Avner (actor Eric Bana) to head a five man team to kill the responsible parties. The movie painstakingly traces the team's attempts to kill off the planners. Each member of the team comes across as a real person, each brave and resourceful. Daniel Craig portrays one of the team members.
Avner is a decent man whose conscience gets to him: he cracks under the stress because of the moral dilemma he's been encased in. He's haunted by the blood bath unleashed in Munich and the retaliation under his leadership.
From the standpoint of being a thriller, this is an extremely well-developed film aside from its moral and political implications. The masterful sense of timing, the cinematography, the characterization, the casting, the narrative velocity, the intensity of the action - all contribute to catch your attention and hold it. The scenes of the hostage-taking and the brutal airport violence, like newsreel footage, are not shown all at once. They come at you at different times in the movie making it a gripping experience.
John Le Carre and Graham Greene in their thrillers almost always dealt with the moral dimension of the situation, and this move is powerful because it is much more than a thriller; it deals with the moral consequences of actions and reactions.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Bana Makes a Strong Argument......
Added 12/16/2009
......For Dullest Actor on the Planet. He leads a cast of no-name nobodies in this immensely unbelievable movie. If you can watch past the ridiculous shootout at an hour and 16 minutes, give yourself a pat on the back. With so many liberties taken with history, it's ashame this travesty was even made. Dialogue rarely rings true, and characters never seem to develop any sort of rapport or even a hint of a personality. A tragedy that should've translated into a riveting movie just bored me to tears, and my eyes rolled back into my skull so many times I am permanently cross-eyed. Good shots of cities around the globe, and for capturing the look and feel of the early 70's, cudos. Otherwise, a shameful mess.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Gripping but depressing
Added 12/6/2009
I hadn't previously investigated Munich and its aftermath, so I can't judge the accuracy of this movie. But that doesn't matter, for three reasons: (a) perhaps no one outside the world of espionage knows what really happened, (b) the movie is self-described as only "inspired by" real events, and (c) what matters is the broader message, not the details.
And that broader message is quite obvious, indeed commonplace, if you can rise above a strongly partisan viewpoint. The message is that when two distinct and clannish groups desperately want the same piece of land as their home, and neither group can eliminate the other, conflict and violence will tend to be perpetuated, resulting in a lose-lose outcome. At the same time, there's some hope of compromise and peace if each group comes to recognize the faults in its own ideology and actions, appreciates that the other side isn't entirely wrong, and recognizes a shared humanity. So there are two tensions operating in parallel: (a) between the two groups, and (b) within each group, between making concessions in order to compromise versus continuing to fight (at whatever mutual cost) until the other group has been utterly defeated. At a more specific level, a related message is that assassinations and terrorism may keep pressure on the other side, but they ultimately only contribute to perpetuating the conflict rather than resolving it.
The movie depicts all of this quite clearly, and thereby does a service in helping us better understand the problem. At nearly 3 hours, it's quite long, but it kept my attention, so I didn't mind. As some reviewers have noted (ignore the extremists), it isn't a perfect movie (hence my 4-star rating), but I still recommend it to people who want to better understand why these types of conflicts are so difficult to resolve.
Finally, here's my proposed solution to the problem. Forget about the current Palestinian territories and instead give the northmost third of Israel to the Palestinians. Provide the Palestinians with quality infrastructure, fully cover their relocation costs, and provide them with plenty of seed money, all of this paid for by Israel and international aid. Help the Palestinians establish a credible democratic government with adequate military backing. Last but not least, place Jerusalem under UN control, with everyone having guaranteed safe access to it, including a dedicated highway from the new Palestine to Jerusalem. That's all it takes: allow each group to continue to exist, physically seperate the two groups, allow each group to have quality land within the current territory, and throw some money at the problem where needed. Can we please implement this solution soon, so that everyone can move on to other issues?
2 out of 2 people found this helpful.
|
