Steven Spielberg’s appetite for killing is there for all to see in Munich ! Amongst all the blood shed you get to see some engrossing emotions in this movie. Should say, the director is back with his usual gripping style of movies, after the debacle called War of the worlds.
The Palestinians kill 11 Israeli athletes during the Olympics of 1972, held at Munich (Germany). So the Israeli consulate appoints a team of 5 to assassinate 11 other important Palestinians who were involved in the Munich. The team should act off the records and kill all the people listed by the consulate. The mind-set of the individuals who form the team and do the killing is the crux of the movie. We get to see a lot of action (violence), in the way they do these murders and the way they plan and go about them.
The movie takes no stance as to whether the consulate was right or wrong in its decision, rather just narrates the story as it happened and thus makes it less controversial.
Eric Bana (Troy famous) plays the lead role. He comes up with a reasonably good performance. The to-be 007 ( Daniel Craig ) playing just a supporting role was surprising. Not much focus on him to note his performance. Few more known faces (whose name I do not remember) and that form the cast. The story, as in almost all Spielberg movies, is inspired from some book. Probably because of that, the characters and their performance too appeared bookish to me. Yet, given the fast screenplay, we hardly realize this.
The special effects, as in every other movie of this director, make us sit up. Every murder is captured on the camera as if it was shot live. Few call it violence; to me without these it could reduce the intensity of the movie. Music as usual by John Williams and it forms the heartbeat for the movie (Thanks to sureshmehcnit, I have started noticing these details too). Unnecessary nudity could have been avoided in this movie, and that I would call as one drawback for this movie.
For any Spielberg follower, it might not be difficult to see the similarity with ‘Saving private ryan’ not just in the plot but also in some events that happen in the movie. Though lighter movies like Catch me if you can and The terminal (from the same director) are more enjoyable, movies like Munich makes us empathize with the characters.
Munich – old wine; new bottle. Still the movie sells because the wine has the same great old taste and the new bottle is doubly attractive.