For more movie summaries, see Kam's Kapsules.
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QUESTIONING THE DIRECTION OF HIS MORAL COMPASS: Undercover Mossad agent Avner (Eric Bana) wrestles with his doubts about the righteousness of his assignment to assasinate the terrorists responsible for the massacre of Israeli athletes in the summer Olympic Games which took place in Munich, Germany in 1972. |
Even though Hitler had stripped German Jews of their citizenship a year earlier, the International Olympic Committee decided to allow Berlin to host the Olympic Games during the summer of '36. The absence of a reaction on the part of the United States and other participating nations served to fuel the subsequent Nazi expansion which resulted in World War II and the tragedy of the Holocaust.
This is why the whole world was watching Munich in '72, the first time after World War II that the games would be held in Germany. Optimistically billed as "The Olympics of Serenity," its consciously-cultivated aura of peace and harmony was shattered on the morning of September 5 when a Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) group called Black September stormed the Israeli athlete's quarters.
By the time the ensuing standoff ended in a bloody shootout about 20 hours later, after a botched rescue attempt by the Germans, 11 Israeli hostages, 1 policeman, and 5 of the terrorists lay dead. "They're all gone," was the ever-echoing refrain uttered by stunned, ABC-TV anchorman Jim McKay when he went on the air to inform the public.
Munich, an emotionally-engaging, espionage thriller directed by Steven Spielberg, revisits the retribution eventually exacted by Israel to avenge the tragedy. Based on the 1984 best seller Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team by George Jonas, the story was previously adapted into a made-for-TV movie entitled Sword of Gideon.
With a plotline closer to the HBO production than the original source material, this version stars Eric Bana (Hulk) as Avner, the Mossad agent personally tapped by Prime Minister Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen) to lead a team of five assassins on a top secret mission to track down and kill the masterminds of the Munich massacre. Out of a sense of patriotic duty, he accepts the assignment, leaving behind a wife (Ayelet Zurer) who is pregnant with their first child.
Relying on Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush), the only Israeli intelligence officer Avner is permitted to contact, he adopts a new identity and assembles a hand-picked task force of highly-skilled experts. This includes Robert (Mathieu Kassovitz), a Belgian bomb-maker; a German Jew Hans (Hanns Zischler), a crack forger and document expert; Carl (Ciaran Hinds), a crime scene sweeper who cleans up after each hit; and Steve (Daniel Craig), their South African getaway driver.
Understanding that Israel would disavow any connection to them if caught, the quintet goes underground. They embark on an operation which has them crisscrossing Europe with stops in Geneva, Frankfurt, Rome, Paris, Athens, Cyprus, Holland, and London, before returning to the Middle East.
What makes this movie remarkable and compelling is the degree to which the personalities of the principal characters are detailed and developed. Spielberg masterfully conveys the toll which the inordinate tension of their job takes on their consciences.
Away from friends and family for months and months on end, they undergo an erosion of their moral bearings and they question whether an "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" is the right response to terrorism. Though spiritually transformed in unanticipated ways, missing loved ones, and plagued, alternatively, by both disgust and self-doubt, they persevere, even though they have somehow been discovered by the enemy, and are now themselves being hunted.
Excellent (4 stars). Rated R for explicit eroticism, expletives, nudity, and violence. Running time: 164 minutes. Distributor: Universal.
For more movie summaries, see Kam's Kapsules.
