MUNICH

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Putting Out Fire With Gasoline
Spielberg Burns The Dirty Laundry Of Revenge
By Cole Smithey

The idea that violence begets violence, regardless of its motivation, is examined through circumstances following the kidnap and murder of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Steven Spielberg’s agitprop movie version is bold and brutal.

At a time when Michael Moore has been vindicated for his once reviled stance against the Bush administration, Steven Spielberg has made a cinematic allegory, based on George Jonas’s book "Vengeance," about violent retaliation that shows the ever-escalating cost of indulging in revenge.

"Munich" is at once a deeply disturbing and ardently effective film that operates successfully as a political thriller and as a cautionary tale.

Steven Spielberg borrows a page from the script mechanics of George Clooney’s "Good Night And Good Luck" when he intermingles television reports of the developing 21-hour hostage crisis in Munich in 1972 after members of the PLO faction known as "Black September" take action. The camera switches between the escalating narrative dilemma and actual televised news reports — from Jim McKay, Peter Jennings, and Howard Cosell — describing in newspeak of the era the shocking events as they unfold.

We bear silent witness to an awful struggle between the Olympians and their masked captors as one Israeli athlete is shot in the cheek so that blood freely gushes from the side of his face before more point-blank violence erupts. Spielberg sets a gory tone for the film right from the start and never backs off from the blood-letting for the duration of the film.

Eric Banna ("Chopper") is thoroughly convincing as Avner, a former Israeli Mosaad (Secret-Service) agent called in to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (perfectly played by Lynn Cohen). Meir makes no bones about assigning Avner to lead a team of five hit men to carry out assassinations of 11 "Black September" terrorists either directly or indirectly involved in the Munich incident.

Although Avner doesn’t discover it at the time, Meir also dispatches two other similar teams to carry out what will be the most successfully orchestrated covert operation in history. Avner leaves behind a beautiful young wife with a baby due when he accepts the assignment that will irreparably damage him emotionally.

Under the all-business command of Mosaad senior agent Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush) Avner agrees to operate completely off of the books as an independent agent with no protection or ties to Israel. The action revs quickly as Avner goes to Europe to meet the four agents he will lead on the long and perilous series of bloody missions.

Daniel Craig plays a hothead mercenary from South Africa and Ciaran Hinds plays a dapper and more traditional brand of spy. Mathieu Kassovitz does the demolition honors as a toy maker turned bomb maker, and Hanns Zischler is a bow-tie wearing document forger. The four men strike up a tangible bond that gives the film a momentary lilt of excitement before their first act of revenge diminishes their potential as truly empathetic characters.

"Munich" is a movie that leaves you feeling wrung out, and a little sick. It doesn’t charge you up with its blood-spurting action. Screenwriters Tony Kushner and Eric Roth momentarily liberate the film’s trudging rhythm of revenge killings when Avner converses with a young Palestine Liberation Organization soldier while the two men share the same safe house. Avner borders on condescension when he questions why the man wants to return to a dry and desolate land.

When the Palestinian replies, because it is his home, the character speaks volumes about the hopes and dreams of generations such sentiment connotes. The conversation bristles with animosity and yet is the most encouraging dialogue in the movie. The people who Avner’s elite squad assassinate are soon replaced by more determined terrorists who, like their opponents, wear the title of "freedom fighters." There’s an oxymoron in there, and Spielberg leaves it to the audience to decide where exactly it is.

Rated R. 167 mins.