Are you one of those who hides behind a pillow every time the music picks up pace and the screen promised to throw an unpleasant surprise, promising to make you shriek? Or does your threaten to give up on you every time a scene shocks your senses making you feel numb? Then perhaps, you should skip this movie...
Steven Spielberg does a fantastic job of capturing both sides of warring camps as they decide to let lose their fury on the soils of Munich. What begins as a display of true sportsmanship at the Olympic games of 1972 in Munich, turns into a gripping nightmare as 11Isreali athletes are subjected to a brutal massacre by the Palestinian Black September Terrorist Group. But that’s not what the movie is all about. It is more about the Israeli response to such a public display of hatred - a top-secret assassination campaign, authorized by Prime Minister Golda Meir and carried out by the security agency Mossad, aimed at wiping out those who had planned the attack.
Crisp movie cuts. Enrapturing sequences and fascinating direction, give the movie a feel akin to that of Bourne Identity. There are no dates flashing to help you keep you track of the timeline, just perfectly timed scence cuts. The feel is complete with dark alleways, spies and secret agents, information being whispered and blood shed around every corner.
Eric Bana (who you might remember as Hector from ’Troy" or more popularly as Hulk from, well, ’Hulk) plays Avner. Who is Avner? Precisely that! He is a nobody. He is not a special agent with extraordinary tact and skill. Nor does he have an above average intelligence. He is just an ordinary officer. The perfect reason to choose him for this high-level secret campaign.
’’You’re ordinary, " Ephraim says, explaining why Avner has been chosen. ’’You’re not a Sabra Charles Bronson."
So he picks his ordinary self and plunges into one of the darkest moments of History to right the wrong. Or so he believes.
The instructions are simple enough: Mossad provides the targets, Avner’s team dispatches them. Keep to Europe. No bellhops or civilians, please. If you’re caught, we never heard of you.
Avner’s team is revealed gradually as the movie progresses. Daniel Craig (yeah the same 007 thinggy) is the hot blooded Israeli itching to seek his revenge. Ciaran Hinds as Carl, wipes out all traces of their existence after every mission, but escapes undetected because he looks as harmless as the nerd next door. The chocolate boy is played by french actor Mathieu Kassovitz who plays robert - the bomb expert and the tail end is brought up by the muscle man played by Hanns Zischler.
Avner’s biggest problem is that he is operating out of Israel. His misisons and targets are provided to him by local contacts. Soon he finds himself questioning the motives of Mossad behind these assasinations. He even begins to doubt the involvement of the Prime Minister and has a nagging feeling that the Prime Minister is in the dark about most of these ’secret’ missions. But he is an officer and an officer follows instructions. So should he then really be questioning them?
He even begins to question the role of Palestinians in the massacre of the athletes. Were the Palestinians really responsible for it? Or was there a deeper darker truth to the event?
The movie ends on a highly inconclusive note, but highlights the need for revenge, the hunger to vindicate and how this hunger further fuels violence. The movie highlights that when blinded by power and the urge to rule, how nobody really is sqeaky clean!