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MUNICH |
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By : Suzanne Philips |
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MUNICH Directed by Steven Spielberg Written by George Jonas (Book) and Tony Kushner (Screenplay) Starring: Eric Bana (Troy, Black Hawk Down), Daniel Craig (Layer Cake, the new James Bond....sigh...) Geoffrey Rush (Pirates of the Caribbean) Running Time: 2 hrs. 44 min. In 1972, a terrorist group calling themselves "Black Sunday" broke into the Olympic Village in Munich, Germany and took the entire Israeli team hostage. As the world watched, the group killed all 11 men. The Israeli government sends a squad of Mossad agents to assassinate the 11 men they say are responsible for planning the attack. This film, based on the book VENGEANCE by George Jonas, shows the lives of these men and their victims and the choices people have to make in the name of that which they believe. I believe Steven Spielberg is a great filmmaker. I find that he tells great stories and can truly humanize things that are normally inhumane. MUNICH is another in this line of great stories. He has done an amazing job of showing that the terrorists and the men sent to take them out have lives beyond what they do. So often, the "bad guy" in films is portrayed as a wholly evil being. Actually, in real life, very few people are truly evil. They have families and lives and truly believe, at least in the beginning, that what they are doing is right and just. And they ultimately become very similar to those they are trying to wipe out - terrorists. Eric Bana plays Avner a Jewish man whose father was an Israeli hero and who works for the Mossad. His wife is 7 months pregnant with their daughter and his life is pretty normal until the Munich massacre. He is recruited by the Mossad to run a special team of agents to assassinate those responsible. When they start out, Avner truly believes what they are doing is the right thing for his country and his family. As he gets to know some of the victims and sees that they have lives not that dissimilar from his, he starts to question what he believes in. Bana is amazing as Avner. While he starts out as a fairly normal happy husband and father whose life is a bit predictable, he slowly begins to break down and you can see him absolutely fall apart. Bana does a great job not going over the top showing this change but brings it about in subtle things over the course of the almost 3 hours. He is caring, paranoid, deceitful, cold blooded and virtuous and can switch between these emotions in a second. Nice to finally get to see Eric given something he can stick his teeth into after BHD. Plus it was nice to see Naked Eric again yea! Daniel Craig was there....that is about all I have to say about him...to be fair though he really doesn't have much to do in this film. Bana is really the main thrust of the film and the other characters on the team, while vital to the ensemble, don't have much in the way of interesting things to watch. One standout that I found myself really watching was Gila Almagor who plays Avner's mother. Every scene she was in, I found myself really captivated by her performance and she and Bana worked very well together. What I found so important about this film is that no one group or religion was shown as being wrong or evil. Spielberg did a really great job showing that all peoples have their faults and they can all do some terrible things, but at the end of the day, they have their own reasons for doing them. And some people can be manipulated by others into doing something that they normally would not do. I find it sad on a personal level that if you look back to the Crusades or to this time of the Munich assassinations and up to 9/11....the same things are still going on today as they were 30 years ago or eons ago. What has really been accomplished? Violence, as it has been said, only begets more violence, it doesn't beget peace. I found the final image in the film, a still shot of the World Trade Center as it was in the 70's a fitting symbol of all this. While the film is a bit long and does drag slightly at times, I forgive this as the characters and story is just so masterful and important. 4 out of 5 Also saw a trailer for Billy Boyd's (LOTR) new film ON A CLEAR DAY which looks really funny and charming! |