User Reviews

Putting history to one side and viewing it purely as cinematic entertainment, the first two hours are quite thrilling. With good story telling, realistic acting (apart from some dodgy accents) and big explosions, it's all quite compelling.

Without going into the story too much, 5 Jewish hit men are assigned to assassinate the 11 perpetrators of the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage disaster. All the hits are styled in a hand held camera fashion, which adds great tension and realism in true Spielberg style. Yes, the action is exceptional. There are two fantastic scenes where the hit men themselves get caught up in their own hit i.e. Explosives and being too close when it goes off.

Although Munich plays accurately to the tragic 1972-hostage situation (so I believe), it's still a ham-fisted film. Some scenes don't knit together well and confuse cinema-goers, especially after the two-hour mark. That's when the film really goes down hill, but I'll get to the crap ending soon...so please be patient The overall style of the film plays like a documentary at times, especially the start. When story kicks in, it's all very typical of Spielberg and his limited view of outer USA. In a way this isn't a criticism, more of a observation i.e. When in Paris we see the Eiffel Tower, when in Amsterdam everybody rides push bikes, and so on. Clichés like this are always prevalent with American filmmakers. I was disappointed when in London we didn't see the Tower or Big Ben, although it was raining.

Now to the big issue, and it is big my friends. This is a big spoiler so stop reading now if spoilers aren't your thing. The ending, apart from being 30 minutes too long is awful. The camera splits between Eric Bana (Avner) having sex with his wife and the final act of the hostage talking where the hostages are brutally shot and blown up in a helicopter all synchronised with Avners almighty orgasm. It was truly sickening. Spielberg's a master filmmaker with yes men for editors who can't keep his films under two hoursbut hey, that's just me.

"Munich is serious, adult film-making at its most nugatory, and America will never produce political movies of any depth if we reward work of this calibre." - Alan Dale

"Munich" begins on a strong note, Spielberg's documentary camera capturing Black September gunmen as they break into the Olympic dorms and mercilessly gun down a group of Israeli athletes. Like "Schindler's List" and the best bits of "Saving Private Ryan", Spielberg's camera dispassionately and objectively records what it sees. There's no forced storytelling or clunky moralising.

Unfortunately it's all downhill from here, as Spielberg turns what would could have been a riveting docudrama into a simplistic morality tale. Everything about Munich reeks of bad art. Its dialogue is didactic, its pacing is awkward, its flashbacks are jarring, its politics are sanitized, its music is hokey, its characters are cardboard, its plot is completely ahistorical and its "family metaphors" are tedious. Throw in Avner's (the film's lead assassin) forced "moral tragedy", the obligatorily "child in peril sequence", comedic sex and countless needlessly long scenes, and you have Spielberg's most annoying "serious project" since "AI".

When promoting the film, Spielberg said: "The thing I'm very proud of is that Tony Kushner and I did not demonize anyone in the film. They're individuals. They have families."

Yes, there's no evil in Spielberg's world. There's no complex motivation, judgement, ambivalence or scepticism. No understanding of how the world really works. Spielberg doesn't deal with irrational motivation, passionate beliefs, unforgiving rage- all facts of life commonly found in the Middle East. Instead it's all "lets just get along". As a result, there's no real understanding of why the athletes were kidnapped, no talk of Palestinian oppression, or how ideologies are bred and mismanaged.

Not once did I believe that this was how real assassins act, look, talk or behave. The real Avner faced no moral dilemma nor did he question whether or not killing 11 Palestinians was the same as killing 11 Israelis. George Jonas, the guy who wrote Vengeance, even disliked the film. His book was written to justify counter terrorism by showing the evil of, not the Palestinians, but the elite who used patriotism and islamofascism to breed hate among their own people. "Munich" washes it's hands of all that. It's simply content to regurgitate the same clunky message preached in Adam Sandler's "You Don't Mess With The Zohan". IE-"violence breeds violence" and "everyone has a family, so lets chill out baby, because deep down we're all the same!"

But of course if everyone were equal, there would be no conflict. It is precisely inequality and injustice that is the problem. But no, Spielberg romanticises everyone. Far from being an oppressed minority, the Palestinians are portrayed as educated intellectuals and sexy hit women. Similarly, the Israeli's go to great lengths to prevent collateral damage. When they do accidentally kill innocents it's only because the French (those pesky French!) intentionally gave them the wrong explosives. And of course Spielberg's Israeli's aren't stone cold killers and trained professionals. No, they're toy makers and accountants with silly moral dilemmas.

It's all well and good to paint everyone in a falsely positive light, but if you're not going to examine the roots of anything, at least show the evil on both sides. Show some sort of truth. Spielberg says that counter terrorism is just as bad as terrorism, but you can morally justify between counter terrorism and terrorism, the same way you distinguish between war and war crimes. It is possible to say that the Palestinian cause is as honourable as the Israeli cause, but it's not possible to say that terror is as honourable as resisting terror unless the initial terror is portrayed as being rational resistance.

And so the film pretends to be critical of Israel, but in actuality it dare not show the true horrors of Israeli violence. We can see the brutal horrors of the Munich massacre, but we are denied the Israeli violence that instigated it. The end result is that Spielberg turns Avner into yet another Jewish victim, an object of sympathy in a situation in which he is precisely not the victim. In contrast, the Palestinian Other is denied a voice, denied any context, history or motive. The symbolic necessity, as Sartre argued, of targeting the Olympic Games, is thus completely ignored.

The reason Spielberg takes his silly "we're all the same" stance is because he can't bare to paint either side in even the faintest of bad lights. He thinks he's chosen the moral high road, when in fact, by ignoring all truth he's chosen no road at all. The high road is cold objective truth, but Spielberg has always been more interested in sanitizing history by avoiding painful traumas.

But ignoring the philosophy of the film, "Munich" still fails as basic entertainment. It becomes tiresome and repetitive, utilizing an obvious and predictable narrative progression which attempts to show that Avner's growing doubt is proportional to each assassination. Too slow to work as a thriller, the film also fails as a personal tragedy, Avner's inner turmoil never convincingly explained. Thin Spielberg characters are usually not this bothersome, but here their sign posted, theatrical moral monologues come across as obvious and lowbrow.

There are other problems too. Why would a hit-man be so traumatised? Why would he "recollect" events he didn't witness? Of course, by showing the massacre in flashbacks, Spielberg hopes to build to a horrific death/sex crescendo. But it all feels silly. Spielberg's handling of sex and adult relationships has never been good.

4/10- A superficial, safe and self-important fantasy movie, churned out without much intelligent thought. "Paradise Now", "Z" and "The Battle of Algiers" tackle similar material in a much better way. Similarly, see "Day of the Jackal" or "Black Sunday" (anything by mid-period Frankenheimer and Costa Gavras) for Spielberg's "70's thriller" aesthetic done right.

This is a film that many people consider to be Spielberg's masterwork . In many ways Spielberg amputates much of the sugary sentiment that has spoiled a number of his other movies and makes a rather dispassionate film . Unfortunately the film starts with the claim that it's " inspired by actual events " thereby making an uncritical audience believe they're watching a film heavily based upon fact when in fact the opposite is true

The basic premise is correct : A PLO splinter group called " Black September " murders the Israeli team in Munich during the 1972 Olympic Games and in retaliation the Israeli leader Golda Meir organises a Mossad hit team to wipe out the terrorist leaders responsible . Unfortunately this is where the premise runs out of facts and replaces nearly everything with invention , speculation and farce

Stop to consider the team put together . Probably the most important member is the bomb maker so who do Mossad employ ? Someone who strangely has no experience of making bombs ! He's such a liability he almost kills a fellow agent , fails to kill a target during another operation due to his lack of bomb making experience and eventually blows himself up a farm house . I guess the rest of the team had so little faith in him that's the reason they weren't around when he was making bombs ?

Mossad uses a secretive unnamed French organisation to find the whereabouts of their targets . In reality this organisation almost certainly doesn't exist but makes a good cover story . Unfortunately as it plays out on screen you find yourself questioning the logic of it all . It's even brought to the audience's attention when Avner suggests it may be a cover for Fatah to liquidate PLO rivals . There's no suggestion or hint what the organisation is . Would Mossad even think about dealing with an organisation if they're on a top secret mission that can't fail ?

Avner himself has doubts about the mission , so much so that he suffers a paranoid breakdown and is mentally scarred for life . There's also the notorious sex scene at the end with Avner and his wife intercut the Munich massacre . What's the point of this ? Is there moral equivalence ? Are we to think that if a democratic government surrounded by murderous foes on all sides takes part in assassinations this makes them no better than terrorists ?

The production team could defend themselves on the last point by saying it makes for a more dramatic film because the protagonist has an inner turmoil and this is what drama is all about but there was no need to do this . From what I've read about Operation Wrath Of God none of the Mossad hit team had any qualms about assassinating terrorists . What Spielberg has done is make a film believing because " good people are doing bad things " they must be traumatized by it when in fact this isn't the case in life . He made the opposite mistake with SCHINDLER'S LIST by painting Oskar Schindler in an overly saintly way and his simplistic world view has once again got in the way of a good film that could have been much better

Munich is getting extremely mixed reviews -- from a coronation by Roger Ebert to a trashing from Anthony Lane. My response is somewhere between the two. As a thriller, it is a little predictable for three hours, I accept that. Nevertheless, I've rarely shared a character's (Bana's character's) sense of being hunted before in a movie. Yes, it's a little heavy hitting on the sermonic/moralising side -- but it is Spielberg, and you expect a little didactic direction there. The last scene, with the appearance of the World Trade Center (it's 1972) hammers the 9/11 commentary in a little too much for my liking. For minutes leading up to it, it was obvious that the two characters would end their dialogue with the twin towers in view. I was sitting in the theatre thinking, okay, pan a little more to the right, bring them in ... that's it ... there you go! And then there's the much discussed final sex scene between bana's character and his wife. inter-cut with images of the Munich killings. I interpreted this to be a comment on the endless cycle of violeve: go forth and multiply, the biblical Israel is told, and with every new child is born another subject of generational hatred and the need for vengeance. Others have interpreted this scene more "redemptively" -- new life entering the world, the morning after the darkest night, etc. Overall, it's a good, possibly important, film which misses some opportunities for subtlety and implied comment. Tony Kushner's role seems to have been to polish -- and he had literally only weeks to do that. An original screenplay from Kushner would have improved this considerably. That's not to give the movie a slating: i'd recommend it to anyone, and it has to be considered for some awards. The inevitable controversy in the U.S. about anti-semitism in the film is simply beyond stupid and beyond contempt.

In an interview given shortly before the release of "Munich," director Steven Spielberg discussed his film in the context of world terror today, as follows: "Somewhere inside all this intransigence, there has to be a prayer for peace."

I personally recall the tragic events of the 1972 Olympic games in Munich, as I had just graduated from college and was following closely the moving and graphic images on television, as described so vividly by newscasters Jim McKay and Peter Jennings. The opening scene of "Munich" recreates the attack on the dormitory and the subsequent killing of the athletes at the airport. Those were ten minutes of taut and riveting drama.

But the main dramatic impetus of "Munich" is the retaliation on the Palestinian planners of the "Black September" massacre. The strike force is led by the character Avner, a zealous and patriotic member of Israel's Mossad. Along with Eric Bana in the role of Avner, the entire cast of "Munich" is superb. Geoffrey Rush is a standout as the Mossad handler of Avner, and in an all-too-brief scene, Lynn Cohen turns in a charismatic performance as Golda Meir.

But "Munich" is not a film to discuss in terms of star performances, and much credit should go to Tony Kushner and Eric Roth for the thoughtful ensemble screenplay. The most memorable moments in the film are those involving the hit team led by Avner. In the planning and carrying out of the assassinations by a small group of men, it becomes clear that the participants are no more than ordinary people who become obsessed with killing. Thus Avner, who would prefer the domestic world of living with his wife and newborn daughter, descends into a virtual state of madness as a result of the killing frenzy.

The Greek poet Aeschylus wrote one of the most expressive works of literature on the theme of "an eye for an eye" in the revenge trilogy "Oresteia." That epic work dramatizes the culmination of the long cycle of murder within the ill-fated House of Atreus in Greek mythology. The killings finally end when the goddess Athena establishes the law court in Athens to provide human justice, as opposed to blood vengeance. Orestes succumbs to the pursuit of the furies and spirals into madness. That was the precise tragic journey of Avner, as depicted in "Munich."

Mr. Spielberg's concept of "intransigence" gets to the heart of the matter in our own modern tragic experience. In the Oxford English Dictionary, the word intransigence is defined as "uncompromising hostility; irreconcilability." Like the "Oresteia," the film "Munich" provides a balanced and powerful commentary on the human impulse of "an eye for an eye" revenge. The ancient Greek concept of justice meant something like "scale" or "balance" used to resolve a seemingly irreconcilable conflict. The thoughtful and powerful film "Munich" offers us the opportunity to meditate on this concept, not for the 5th century B.C. world of Aeschylus, but for our own.

Americans helped get terrorists over the fence? This is so irresponsible. It's the first of many contrived scenes. • One Jewish athlete holds off eight terrorists at his door so Spielberg can set up tension? He didn't look like the 300 pound gorilla that was historically at that door. • We're supposed to believe that the terrorists were watching the news. The news was US and in1972 there was no Cable, no satellite. What news were they watching? German? We're supposed to believe that the Germans actually broadcast vital sniper positions to the terrorists? Eric Bana's character, Avner, is told he may have to leave Israel for years to finish his mission. Why did Avner move his family to NewYork? There was no good reason except to get his World Trade Center shot. • Jews were not mad at Golda Meir for not negotiating with the terrorists. It's preposterous to even make that claim in the film. Why put American money in a box? Wouldn't they use Deutsch Marks? He was in Germany. In 1972, there was no way to spend US dollars in Europe • Why 6 boxes? Couldn't the money fit in one? Why is his German friend at the lunch meeting where he is going to ask for the names of the people responsible for Munich? Dialogue was so stupid, "If you tell anyone . . . I don't know what I'll do." • Why in the first killing of the terrorists do they look nervous? Wasn't Avner Mossad? He was also a former bodyguard to the prime minister. Now he looks like a scared school boy. What? • No one heard those shots? I've been to Europe; those high arches would have echoed that sound for miles. • Why are they celebrating or rejoicing their killing? These are trained Mossad agents. No? • Why is Avner haunted by the Munich games and have these visions? He wasn't there. • Why would an affluent Parisian Arab like Mohammad Hamshari not have a phone at his desk? • That whole scene with the girl coming back is not only a cheap plot device to pull at our heart strings, it also is totally unrealistic and messed up. If you look closely, it's so messed up they had to drive the car backwards to arrive back in front of the house, otherwise they would have been spotted by Ciaran Hines. I am supposed to believe that the bomb expert, Robert, had to remove two pieces of tape and give Ciaran Hines enough time to run to the car and stop him? Wouldn't he have the key ready to go? • He returns to Israel for his child's birth. Why can't he go home? Obviously, he did. So, what's the drama? Again, why make his wife leave? • His Dad was a war hero, but in prison for his birth? What's going on? • When they have the scene with the hotel bomb, why does he have to be in the next room? The bed spring bomb device tells you when the victim has lied down? • Why does the Arab say he looks like a Swede? Don't Swedes have blond hair and blue eyes? Did I miss a joke? • Bad enough he is in the hotel room next to the bomb, why would he switch off the lamp so close to the door. Wouldn't a trained Mossad agent take precautions? • Why is the only damage to the Couple next door the woman's eyes? How did that happen? • What's up with Louis and Papa? They say they don't work with governments. Who else would want names of the people responsible for the Munich Massacre? Rich Americans? Why? This is RIDICULOUS!! • Why does he want to go to Beirut? Why are they not allowed to go to Arab countries? In Beirut, in the dress in drag scene o Why does everyone get shot in sequence o This scene is full of problems. Why do all these Mossad agents run down stairs in a single file? Why don't any of the Arabs shoot these guys as they are running down the stairs in a single file line? • Why would Louis have the PLO and Avner's team shack up in the same safe house? • Why do they yell their terrorist affiliation to strangers? Why speak English and then German? • Language is all messed up. • Avner's conversation with the PLO guy was terrible. In Greece, why does Hans bring an extra grenade, especially after Robert tells them that they are all old and should be thrown away? Robert says, "I am trained to dismantle bombs, not to make them." THINK ABOUT THIS!!! HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY DISMANTLE A BOMB AND NOT KNOW HO TO MAKE ONE! Why in the middle of the film are all these trained Mossad agents now questioning what they are doing? • Am I the only one that found a Mossad agent sniffing the air for the scent to Carl's door as absolutely ridiculous? He says "I saw her first," walks away, and then, I guess his Mossad secret agent senses kick in, and he comes back to the door. Why did they use Zip air pump guns to kill the Dutch woman? Why not sue guns? o Also, why is it when they're screwing and loading their zip guns, instead of pulling the gun out of the drawer and shoot them, she instead flashes her right breast. This whole scene is ridiculous • Why after Hans is missing do we find him sitting on a park bench? How did we get there? • The rest of the film descends into total chaos with him going crazy, and by this point, I just can't believe this film got a nod for best picture.

What should have been an uneventful Olympics in Munich, 1972, became the bloodshed that unfolded like a Moebius strip and unleashed even more blood unto the world. On September 5, 1972, eight Palestinian terrorists killed two Israeli athletes, kidnapped nine more, and asked for safe passage out of Germany and the subsequent liberation of Arab prisoners in Israeli and German prisons. Once at the airport they encountered resistance from the German authorities, and in a scuffle, all of the other nine hostages were killed.

This led to the Israeli government to have the Mossad -- Israel's intelligence agency -- track down and kill every terrorist responsible for the killings. For this they hired one of Golda Meir's bodyguards, known as Avner, put him in a special ops team, and gave them minimal information about these terrorists. Avner on his own is able to strike back at the "supposed" terrorists via the appearance of a shady Parisian named Louie, but as the assignments become more and more difficult, he wonders if it is all worth it, and once his own team gets decimated by counter-agents, he wonders if behind every terrorist there is a even more dangerous one just waiting in the wings with ways to get back at him and his family.

Steven Spielberg is at his best when not directing sci-fi movies. The world of 1972 hasn't changed a bit then from now: when one sees the events of September 11, 2001 (and the World Trade Center inserted into the New York City skyline right at the final scene), and the political interests which led to their horrific unfolding on American soil -- once a concept thought unthinkable -- it becomes food for thought if behind every Saddam, every Osama, there aren't tens, if not hundreds, waiting, with more reasons to hate the Western world for butting their heads in their business. Avner, while a minion of Israel, ponders these things, and is himself terrorized when he comes to America to live a life away from the madness he was involved in: namely, the never-ending conflict between Israel and Palestine, both fighting for what they consider home. As one PLO member effectively says: "Home is all we know."

No right, no wrong, but a grey middle is the prevalent tone in MUNICH. While re-enacting a swift retribution against those who destroy order would be the thing to do, what does it solve? Spielberg doesn't say. What he does do is create an increasing, nail-biting suspense that Hitchcock himself would have loved -- and this film, reminiscent itself of SABOTAGE, is proof that terror and mayhem at the hands of subversives is still a thing of now as much as then and that innocents are always on hand to pay with the intended victims. One sequence, as the foursome wait for their first target to pick up the phone but find that his young daughter has not left the house yet, is incredibly powerful. Another one is when Avner waits for a bomb to go off in the room beside him. Nothing is ever clean and easy in the real world, and even bombers can never really know what to expect from their toys, and all one can do is wait and wait and wait.

MUNICH has strong performances all throughout. Eric Bana is tortured as Avner, a man who only wants to be with his wife and young daughter and cannot escape the horrors he has seen. Geoffrey Rush, Ciaran Hinds, Daniel Craig, Mathieu Kassovitz, Lynn Cohen, Hans Ziechler, Michael Lonsdale, and Mathieu Amalric all supply great support in a well-rounded cast and flesh out great characters in this excellent, if morally ambiguous story.

The film starts off at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany. A group of Arab terrorists capture and later murder 11 Israeli athletes. The Israeli community is outraged with the murders and they set out to investigate who planned the massacre, in order to send assassins to settle the score. Eric Bana (who plays Avner) is chosen as the lead assassin and the film takes us on a thrilling, violent and heartbreaking ride watching how Bana and his team accomplish their morbid task and the dangers they go through in order to finish it.

After the film ended, I thought about the reviews that complained it was too cold and detached for their taste. I Don't know why some critics felt nothing because I did care for Eric Bana and his family. At first it's hard to like him for what he's doing, but after we see his remorse, guilt and paranoia(nightmares, trouble sleeping, fear of being murdered) start to kick in as why he's doing what he's doing and if his actions will accomplish anything, I began to care for him. The film also offers great suspense and the haunting score adds depth to it. We know Avner (Bana) is an assassin, he has to kill people and the film builds an unnerving suspense around this; anything can go wrong with the operations and we fear for the life of innocent people such as the target's family or innocent bystanders who have nothing to do with the events in Munich.

Another complain I've seen from a few people is that the film had no point. My guess is they weren't paying attention since Avner (bana) had two discussions with other characters, which clearly show what the film is ultimately about; the discussion with Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush) at the end of the film and the discussion with Ali (Omar Metwally) outside the safe-house. I thought the film was made to show how pointless and absurd revenge can be, that violence cannot bring about peace. Group A kills people from Group B and vice versa, but it doesn't stop there, the slain people are replaced the endless cycle of killing continues. This in effect made the film thought-provoking, it makes you think about subjects you wouldn't normally think of or discuss with other people. Thinking about it fills you with sadness since the events in it are in reality still happening and it's sad to see how the two groups (Jews AND Arabs) don't realize that death and violence will continue if they don't learn to listen and forgive others and let the authorities decide what punishment people should get.

Following the kidnap and murder of the Israeli team at the 1972 Munich Olympics by the Palestinian terrorist organisation Black September, a team of Mossad secret agents are tasked with killing all those known to have planned the attack. Avner, the lead operative, goes about this grim work with skill and resolve, but slowly finds himself increasingly paranoid and disillusioned with the futility of revenge …

As with all of Spielberg's work, this film is immaculately constructed, with exceptionally fine attention to detail as Rome, Nicosia, Beirut, Athens, London and New York in the early seventies are brilliantly reconstructed. It's also particularly well edited, with several sequences stylishly intercutting between scenes to great dramatic effect. It also tackles one of the most difficult political issues there has ever been - the Arab-Israeli conflict - with feeling, intelligence and objectivity, and those who have derided it as both pro and anti-Zionist propaganda are, in a word, wrong. However, the movie's mixture of politics and thriller don't work very well - the action scenes aren't that tense, the gun-battles don't have bite because we don't know the victims and the deaths of Avner's three colleagues are puzzling and inexplicable. Avner's descent into guilt and indecision over his actions is laudably acted but weakly written - the morality of being a paid assassin is explored with much more vigour and honesty in films like Leon or Grosse Pointe Blank. The problem with movies "inspired by real events" (man, I hate that phrase) is that filmmakers feel a moral responsibility to report like journalists, rather than entertain, which is what movies do best, and so often settle for a watered down middle ground. Compare this film with something like Brian DePalma's Mission Impossible; it too has stylish European layouts and moral dilemmas aplenty, but also fabulous car chases, sneaky intrigue and neato spy stuff, since it's unfettered by any chains to reality. Well played throughout by an unusual international mix of actors; the five Israeli agents are really an Australian, an Irishman, an Englishman, a Frenchman and a German ! I particularly like Hinds as the bespectacled cleanup man, who seems the most professional but ends up making the stupidest mistake, and Lonsdale and Cohen both have flashy parts as a Don Corleone-style patriarch and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir respectively. This is a moving, extremely well made, thought-provoking film, but in the end its potted mixture of history and fiction make it dull and sober. Based on a book by journalist George Jonas and filmed before in 1986 as a Canadian TV-movie called Sword Of Gideon.

Reading over the comments and message board postings for Munich on this site, I get the impression that at least 75% of the people here are less interested in discussing the film and its message than the Arab-Israeli conflict in general. I've read a lot of baseless criticisms, and I honestly think that the whole point went over most of these people's heads. The ones who have actually seen the movie, that is.

This film was a masterpiece, and it's refreshing to see such a heavy, thought-provoking film released by a major studio. Anyone who claims that the film is pro-Israel or biased in either direction really has brought their own baggage to the theatre with them, or they haven't actually seen the film firsthand.

To anyone seriously interested in seeing this film, PLEASE do not listen to the pseudo-intellectuals who are posting their ignorant, uninformed opinions of the film at IMDb. Don't go to the theatre expecting to have your own personal bias (whichever it may be) reinforced. The only bias you will find in this film is your own.