Munich
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Written by: George Jonas (book), Tony Kushner and Eric Roth (screenplay)
Starring: Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, Geoffrey Rush, and many more.

In my opinion, the majority of the reviews of Spielberg’s “Munich” have failed their readers. From what I’ve read, so many people are reviewing this movie’s message rather than the film. Like “Fahrenheit 9/11″ or “The Passion” before it, I think some people’s political leanings and/or allegiance to Spielberg (I love Spielberg, but well… you’ll see) is tainting the scores. “Munich” tells the tale of the 1972 massacre of the Israeli Olympic by Palestinians. A group was sent out across Europe, “unofficially”, with a list of names of people supposedly involved in the planning for them to hunt down and kill.

While there are many hailing this as a great film, Spielberg is getting nailed from all directions: Israeli groups say he is naive about terrorism, Palestinian groups are saying it doesn’t humanize them enough or show what their motives really were. There are some that instead say it is too even-handed, that Spielberg has tried too hard to please everyone. If I really had to pick, I’d go more with the latter — it seems the only message of this film is about the haunting price of revenge, that violence only creates more violence no matter who does it. I can deal with that. Neither side has exactly been angelic, and I’ve been attacked so many times for even saying so that I’ve kind of given up on even having an opinion. Did this really factor into my opinion of the film?

No. I found “Munich” to be the worst Spielberg movie I’ve seen (no, I haven’t seen Hook). It’s the least commercial, and the least watchable, and my opinion has nothing to do with politics whatsoever.

A variety of little problems were evident from the get-go. While this movie has the watchword “inspired by true events”, some characters are historical figures I don’t recognize, such as the female Prime Minister of Israel. Some way of pointing out who she was while she was on screen would have been helpful rather than finding out who she was much later. There were no location subtitles despite frequent scene changes. Many scenes feature characters speaking in foreign dialects that in my opinion should have been subtitled. The characters took off on their quest before ever being properly developed, and would fail to be adequately developed as the film progressed beyond generic ‘types’ – the hothead, the smart one, etc. The film is overly quiet and distant, and most of all, bloated, with too much time between anything happening. It feels like we were given a director’s cut DVD of a b-revenge flick that wasn’t good at a regular running length in the first place. So basically, this movie bored the holy hell out of me.

I love Spielberg, and saw this movie not because of any specific interest in the story, but because I trust him to hold my interest. Spielberg has made movies about serious subjects before, and as much as we don’t want to say it, Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan are entertaining films. “Munich” is not.

Despite a cast of people I like including Daniel Craig, Geoffrey Rush and Eric Bana, each character is stone faced and dull, with noone giving a standout performance. Eric Bana in particular is atrociously bland here. When he isn’t staring off into space with dead eyes, he’s required to go into amazingly forced crying fits. The conversations between any set of characters rarely show any passion, and most situations they find themselves in feel really phony. The only tension the entire movie has is the occasional feeling that something is going to go very wrong, because the group is very incompetent in carrying out their cold blooded revenge.

Much has been made of that violence. Yes, it is loud, realistic, and kind of exploitative. But that doesn’t really matter, since these action scenes are also incredibly repetitive, and eventually fail to even work as a tool to wake up the audience. I don’t know if we were supposed to feel all that sympathetic for either side, but some of the revenge murders are vicious enough to make me wonder just what the point was by making them so graphic. I guess this was supposed to reinforce just how nasty killing actually is – that the images can and should haunt you forever – but really all it does it make you feel less sympathetic for everyone. I eventually stopped caring what happened to any of these people, and that’s when I began praying it would end. But it kept going and going and going and going.

I found out that the script was given a run through by Tony Kushner, writer of “Angels In America”, and it is said he had an influence on the set. It shows. “Angels” is probably the one piece of media I’ve hated most of this past decade, as there hasn’t been a movie or series more boring or pretentious. Without saying what it is, there is a scene near the end of “Munich” that is so kitschy, so overblown and ridiculous, I’m sure it was Kushner’s doing.

I’m definitely not alone in my dislike of this film – I’ve got a significant roster of well known, thoughtful reviewers who also hated this movie for the technical aspects of filmmaking alone. So decide for yourself, but don’t make my mistake of going to see it just because it’s Spielberg. — Goon

SCORE:

Recommended If You Like: Sword of Gideon, The Bourne Identity, The Day of the Jackal, One Day in September, Route 181