Munich
It's rare for me to dedicate an entire blog post to a single film, but Steven Speilberg's Munich definately rates. At its core, the film is a spy story - 5 Mossad agents are tasked with the morally and logisitically difficult task of tracking down the planners of Black September's capture and murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. But there are so many more layers to that. The conflict is not simply about Israeli vs. Palestinian - it's about the conflict of being Israeli or Jewish; it's about duty vs. justice; it's about hating someone else as an enemy vs. hating yourself for what you've done to them; and it's a conflct beteen the value of a nation vs. the value of one's soul.
Speilberg handles this complex moral morass in a delicate but detatched, factual fashion - there is no evil laid out for us, but rather it shows us a logical chain of events leading to other, more tragic ones. Watching the Black September operatives storm the Israeli hostel, we see their fear, and that they only kill when threatened with death themselves or during the FUBAR GSG rescue attempt. The Mossad agents begin their work with a sense of righteous anger and nationalistic fervor, which is quickly tempered and eventually doused by a bloody and misplanned assassination attempts and a savage Mossad raid in Lebanon. These are men pushed to the edge by their work who do what they feel they must to survive, even if it costs them everything they hold dear.
The script is superb, written by the author of Angels in America, and enhanced by the nuanced performances from nearly all sectors of the cast. Eric Bana, who has been touted as the next big Aussie thing, finally gets a chance to shine as Avner, the team leader and main character. Bana's acting is better than anything else he's done stateside by degrees of mangitude, and you can really empathize with his character's plight. The rest of the team is likewise excellent, particularly Ciaran Hinds ("Rome"'s Julius Caesar), and Geoffry Rush does a great job as the team's shady handler. All the Arab characters are likewise well done, playing their characters not as radical zealots but men in any army, decent with lives of their own who do horrible things for a living. The only disappointment is Daniel Craig (Mr. Bond, to you all) whose character is rather one dimensional and put to shame by the rest of the cast. Too bad.
Overall, I would highly recommend this film to you all, as an espionage thriller, morality play, examination of the clash of idealism and nationalism, and a sublime piece of entertainment.
It's rare for me to dedicate an entire blog post to a single film, but Steven Speilberg's Munich definately rates. At its core, the film is a spy story - 5 Mossad agents are tasked with the morally and logisitically difficult task of tracking down the planners of Black September's capture and murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. But there are so many more layers to that. The conflict is not simply about Israeli vs. Palestinian - it's about the conflict of being Israeli or Jewish; it's about duty vs. justice; it's about hating someone else as an enemy vs. hating yourself for what you've done to them; and it's a conflct beteen the value of a nation vs. the value of one's soul.
Speilberg handles this complex moral morass in a delicate but detatched, factual fashion - there is no evil laid out for us, but rather it shows us a logical chain of events leading to other, more tragic ones. Watching the Black September operatives storm the Israeli hostel, we see their fear, and that they only kill when threatened with death themselves or during the FUBAR GSG rescue attempt. The Mossad agents begin their work with a sense of righteous anger and nationalistic fervor, which is quickly tempered and eventually doused by a bloody and misplanned assassination attempts and a savage Mossad raid in Lebanon. These are men pushed to the edge by their work who do what they feel they must to survive, even if it costs them everything they hold dear.
The script is superb, written by the author of Angels in America, and enhanced by the nuanced performances from nearly all sectors of the cast. Eric Bana, who has been touted as the next big Aussie thing, finally gets a chance to shine as Avner, the team leader and main character. Bana's acting is better than anything else he's done stateside by degrees of mangitude, and you can really empathize with his character's plight. The rest of the team is likewise excellent, particularly Ciaran Hinds ("Rome"'s Julius Caesar), and Geoffry Rush does a great job as the team's shady handler. All the Arab characters are likewise well done, playing their characters not as radical zealots but men in any army, decent with lives of their own who do horrible things for a living. The only disappointment is Daniel Craig (Mr. Bond, to you all) whose character is rather one dimensional and put to shame by the rest of the cast. Too bad.
Overall, I would highly recommend this film to you all, as an espionage thriller, morality play, examination of the clash of idealism and nationalism, and a sublime piece of entertainment.
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