I went to see Munich last night. It was really fantastic. I don’t know where Eric Bana’s been all my life, but he’s a great actor! (I never watched The Hulk or Troy, because I have standards, so I think this was my first look at him. He’s yummy.) And Daniel Craig’s quite lovely in a rugged way. He should make a great Bond.

Spielberg is getting a little enamoured with his own skills these days. There was no real reason this movie couldn’t have been shorter. There were a lot of lingering shots, and the suspense of the would-he-authorize-the-hit-or-would-he-puss-out, when we knew he was never going to puss out and leave a half-activated bomb in some hotel room. The carnage was awesome and very effective, and even though the movie was extremely violent, I never felt it was excessive. This is why I find shoot-em-up action films so stupid; there are so many real-life reasons to blow up a building or shoot up a helicopter full of athletes; does it have to be because Vin Diesel’s feelings are hurt? Munich’s violence was all about man’s inhumanity to man, not some special effects team’s inhumanity to a film budget.

I knew nothing about the Munich Massacre before I watched this movie, and doing some research on the movie this morning, I’ve found out that the book the movie is based on, Canadian journalist George Jonas’ Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team, has been largely discredited. Even still, the men targeted for assassination in this film were killed, at the time and in the manner depicted in the movie. If it wasn’t Jonas’ source that pulled the trigger, someone else sure did.

But it wasn’t the facts that I took away from this movie, it was the feeling of hopelessness over what is happening in Israel and Palestine. The Palestinians attacked Israel in Munich, Israeli operatives killed prominent Palestinian leaders, the Palestinians letter-bombed Israeli embassies, and so on and so forth for more than 35 years. Was Israel right to fight murder with murder? Was the United States paying Black September to keep their own agents safe? Did Israel's response to Black September help create even more radical terrorists?

I really don’t know much about the creation of Israel and its significance in the history of the Middle East (as an atheist, it doesn’t hold the significance it does for my religious contemporaries, plus, I never went to university, so I didn’t get much of a world history education), but it seems to me that if another government treated a segment of its population the way Israel treats the Palestinians, the UN would be livid. I don’t know how accurate that perception is, but Munich doesn’t do much to dispel me of that opinion.

Wikipedia’s entry on the Munich Massacre

Haaretz, a Tel-Aviv daily newspaper, questions Spielberg’s use of George Jonas’s book for his movie.

The Nation's David Corn reviews the movie and its themes.