Munich
By Mal Simons, Blockbuster.co.uk

Inspired by real events and combining vintage news footage and dramatised scenes, Munich is a highly moving and compelling story showing the aftermath of the Black September attack at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany and is surely Spielberg’s greatest film in years.

In September 1972, the world was watching as terrorists broke into the Olympic village compound in Munich and took the Israeli Olympic team hostage. The athletes were later killed and most of the terrorists escaped at the airport, the film tells the immediate aftermath of these events.

With the Israeli people in mourning and the terrorists identified as a mixture of Palestinians and other characters from the Middle East, the Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen) tells her ministers to forget peace for now and comes up with a plan to show the world that Israel is strong. She calls for Avner ( Eric Bana) , who is recruited for a secret mission to assassinate the men responsible for these atrocities and who may not be able to return to Israel for years. Married with a child on the way, Avner accepts the mission and leads a team of experts including a clean-up man, an explosives expert, a forger and a wheel man. Handing over his passport and Secret Service documents, Avner and his team do not officially exist and will have no contact with anyone and the Mossad.

What is striking about Munich is the even handedness that Spielberg treats to both sides of the argument. Given Schindler’s List and Spielberg’s own history, I expected this to be more pro-Israeli than anything else. There is no preaching that overly favors the Israeli people above the Palestinians and there is also no preaching against Israeli policy – this film lets the viewer make up their own mind – and truly shows the tragedy on both sides of the Middle East divide. Spielberg introduces the film on the DVD and stresses that it was never his intention to make a propaganda piece or question Israel – he simply wanted to show what happened and both points of view.

As you would expect from a Spielberg film, Munich features a fantastic cast of accomplished actors led by Eric Bana and including ( Geoffrey Rush) , Lynn Cohen and ( Daniel Craig) . All the actors are superb in their separate roles. The special effects are amazing – with some incredible explosions. The filmmaker has obviously read up on the details of each assassination as great care has been taken to recreate each scene in exact detail. The music score by the legendary John Williams is also quite emotional and adds a lot of atmosphere to the film.

Munich is more than just a traditional thriller. The violence is very graphic and the realism is both refreshing and disturbing. Munich has an emotional, character driven side to it making this a story about people and not just about revenge.

Over the course of the film, the reactions to the death of the terrorists by the key characters change as the film progresses. Initially the death of each terrorist is greeted with a celebration – drinks, a party and a large meal… but as the terrorists retaliate against the Israeli people and other terrorists move in and replace those that have been killed, the Israeli team start to see the true futility of what they have been asked to do –innocents are hurt and both the KGB and CIA try to interfere with their operation, the team become more and more isolated and separated from reality – paranoid about assassination themselves.

Munich is a tremendous film with a touching and topical subject matter that attempts to stay neutral with regards to the Israel / Palestinian situation. With its moving John Williams score, tremendous script, acting and photography, this is the worthy successor to Schindler’s List and highly recommended as perfect entertainment. The master of the screen has returned! An outstanding achievement!