Munich

Review by: Doc

The film begins with the Munich Olympics of 1972 when Black September terrorists took Israeli athletes hostage.
A long time ago, (20 years?) I read a book, Vengeance by George Jonas, which told the story of an Israeli Mossad assassination team which tracked down some of the planners of the Munich massacre. I recall thinking it would make a great movie. It’s finally been made by Steven Spielberg, and, as loathe as I am to insult the master, it’s not a great movie, although it is a good one. I saw a wonderful one hour and 45 minute thriller contained in a movie well over 2 and a half hours. It seemed longer.


I confess that my take on the film may be colored by having a vague memory of the book and by reading many internet commentaries on the political messages seen or not seen. My wife and I came out of the theater with a completely different take on the message of the movie.


The film begins with the Munich Olympics of 1972 when Black September terrorists took Israeli athletes hostage. The story as imagined by Spielberg is interspersed with actual footage from the day, including the false reporting of a successful resolution and the anguish that the truth of the death of all hostages and terrorists brought to families on both sides watching the events unfold on tiny black-and-white TV’s. I remember watching it “back in the day”.


Cut to Golda Meir and the Israeli cabinet as the plan is hatched to track down the planners. She gives the job to her former bodyguard, Avner, now a Mossad agent with a pregnant wife, who is the son of a hero of Israel’s stormy past. All ties to Mossad are cut, he is sent away from his family to deep cover in Europe to meet his team, collect money from a bank in Geneva, and find the killers.


It was here that I found the first holes in the plot. Apparently, all you need to track down terrorists is a high school chum with a communist girlfriend and a lot of cash. Also, his team of assassins can’t seem to do anything right. If this is the best Mossad has to offer, Israel is in real trouble. The bombmaker can’t get his bombs right, the undercover agents stand out in a crowd, and I never figured out what Daniel Craig (the new James Bond) was supposed to do. It was like watching the “Bad News Bears” of covert operations. You get the feeling this team is a diversion to take attention from the real assassins (and in some historical retellings, that’s exactly what it was).


Working with an independent European “mob” family to obtain information and resources, they successfully begin to root out and kill the targets. But, each killing seems to sap more and more of the team’s will and certainty of purpose and here’s where the greatness slips away. There was far more self-recrimination and doubt than I would have expected in professional operatives and things begin to unravel when one of their team is killed and they go “off the list” to track down and take out his killer.


A key line is uttered during a dinner meeting with the leader of the French crime “family”. Avner is a hobbyist chef and is asked to help cook with “Papa”, masterfully underplayed by Michael Lonsdale, one of those wonderful character actors whose face you know without the name. Looking at Avner’s “short, thick fingers”, he comments, “You have butcher’s hands and a tender heart.” This was my wife’s take on the movie, the toll doing such deeds takes on an otherwise decent man called to such as duty by his country.


Throughout the film, Spielberg uses Avner’s periods of reverie or dream to tell in stark and bloody black-and-white the full tale of the killing of the hostages. As the film closes with a NY skyline including the digitally restored Twin Towers, you’ll have to decide if Spielberg is saying that violence begets violence and that they were destroyed as a consequence of a long series of retaliations or if they are a reminder of the reason the mission, and the war on terror, is necessary. You’ll have to make your own call. I give it three of five scalpels and a wavering phalanx up.

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