Munich (Widescreen Edition) (2006)
| Munich (Widescreen Edition) (2006) | ||||||||||
|
| |||||||||
| Product Details Director: Steven Spielberg Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC Studio: Universal Studios Edition:  Rated: R (Restricted) ASIN: B000F1IQN2 Avgerage Customer Rating:  | ||||||||||
| Customers who bought this DVD also bought: | ||||||||||
| Reviews The real history might be interesting but the film isn't Two things strike me as odd as I look through the other customer reviews of 'Munich' on this site; the star ratings are much higher than I expected and few discuss the film itself - only the historical background. I think this is a classic case of can't-seperate-movie-from-sensitive-history syndrome which is a shame because the film is truly awful. The plot is confused and hard to follow (the use of flashbacks makes no sense), there is no pace or intrigue and it is far too long. Worst of all, Spielberg wasted some fine acting talent (Ciaran Hinds, Daniel Craig, Geoffrey Rush et al) on a script that is impossible to understand. I think Spielberg's mistake was to follow the book too closely. There are too many unrelated scenes and the movie format (even at 2h 40m) doesn't allow for all the supporting information you need to make sense of them. Characters appear and disappear, locations change but the sets seemingly don't. The only scene that was exciting to watch was the one in which the assassins were thwarted by a removals van and an innocent young girl - but this was one short scene among several dozen. If you're being honest with yourself you can't award this film more than two stars, however interesting the book and real history are. User Rating:  an avenger's tears It is poignantly fitting that the man who directed Schindler's List should book-end that tale of Jewish pain with MUNICH, a film that tells another side of this people's struggle to survive in a period when the Jews have a state and the ability to answer with something more than simple suffering. Spielberg claims that the good storyteller exercises 'empathy in every single direction', a project that raises howls whenever it is applied to the Israel-Arab conflict. Or, as this film styles it with historical accuracy, the Israeli-Palestinian dispute over the same dry grove of the fathers' olive trees. Supported by star turns from Eric Bana, Moshe Ivgy, and Michael Lonsdale and a haunting sequence in which Lynn Cohen plays an anguished Golda Meir - forced to the conclusion that 'every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values' - Spielberg's MUNICH manages to focus on the human drama played out by the soul of avengers everywhere. In the wake of the massacre of eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, Bana's Avner is drafted as the unlikely lead agent of Meir's decision to prove that Israel must 'forget peace for now ... we have to show them that we are strong.' Avner carries out his role with taciturn determination, yet his eyes go moister and home calls the more compellingly as he scratches names off the list of eleven Palestinians who must be eliminated in order to show just how costly it is to mess with Israel. That 'family matters' is an affirmation of relative priorities kept by all parties in this film is a theme that Spielberg returns to at measured intervals. In the meantime, Avner and his team of avengers find themselves increasingly struggling with 'the mice inside your skull'. Resolution comes in the end through family itself. But it is a resolution that leaves stained, limping men, not the 'neat, durable men' whom Prime Minister Meir confesses to admiring early in the film's early minutes. This is a film that must be seen by those who care about those conflicts that are fought in memory of the fathers, not least the one that still rages and promises to rage on in a small slice of land just to the east of the Mediterranean Sea. Spielberg has told the tale with astonishing evenness, though it is possible that this conclusion can only be reached from the more or less comfortable distance of this reviewer. Empathy - even that which the director claims to have exercised 'from ever single angle' - hardly seems a virtue to the true-to-life antagonists of this particular conflict. For some considerable time more, blood will continue to flow in the name of the fathers. Avengers who rise up to even the score will themselves come to know the salt of their own tears, and trudge home to find comfort in family. User Rating:  THE MECHANICS OF POLITICAL ASSASSINATION AND IT'S COROLLARY TO THE HUMAN SOUL Spielberg's latest MASTERPIECE proves once again why he's one of my favorite directors. It clocks in at over 2 and half hours. It's an objective, methodical look into the mechanics of assassination and it's effects on the pysches or souls of the patriotic. It is a brutal thriller, but an intelligent one that may wear down those viewers with less patience. 11 Israeli athletes are murdered at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich Germany by a terrorist group calling itself Black September. 5 Israeli men are quickly assembled, their identities erased by the Israeli intelligence agency MOSSAD, and sent on a mission to assassinate those responsible. (Even though the events from the book were relayed to the author by the team leader Avner, played by Eric Bana, the rest of the film is considered by most to be fiction. Including MOSSAD. This has spawned almost as much controversy as Oliver Stone's JFK.) Information on the whereabouts of the Palestinian leaders of Black September is gathered from a shadowy French family with no ties to any political doctrine or government. "We don't work for governments." (I expect this a lie. What other form of information gathering is there, except cladestine information gathering for governments? Or corporations? And anyone in the intelligence business knows that corporations are governments. A possible hole in Avner's story? Maybe he's covering up methodology in his story and protecting informants. It's not possible to trust everthing you read from an ex-spook. Everything depends on their motives and loyalties. These guys spew a lot of disinformation. From what I've gathered from my reading about cladestine Black Ops, the informants were most likely Arab, the information would have come from multiple contacts, and would probably have been passed over through the Agency. But, deep cover also means adapting your own informants with very little agency contact. I must assume the French informants could be real and that they are lying.) Be that as it may, the Israeli assassins pay extravagant sums of money for this information and their identities as Israeli agents are unknown to their informants. Soon the men are taken through European locales such as Italy, France, and Greece to eliminate those responsible for Munich, with the use of guns and explosives. Eventually, with a fullscale raid on a terrorist compound in Beirut. The assassinated terrorist leaders for Black September, who are under the auspices of the KGB and may or may not be under the auspices of the CIA, are quickly being replaced and the political affiliations of the Israeli agents are eventually brought to light. The Israeli agents then discover that information about them is also being given to the other side. And it may or may not be coming from the shadowy French. A very real scenario in the shadow world. Soon, paranoia sets in and no one is who they seem. And people are dying on both sides. Violence and retribution beget violence and retribution. A neverending cycle. During all of this the characters are forced to question the very nature of their own souls. This film poses the question, "Is revenge a worthy act if you are a civilized people and you have been attacked?" But being true to it's objectivity, it never answers that question. Our emotional ties to our identities are what doom us as a species. This is my own observation, not Speilberg's. Superb acting(along with English, you'll hear German, Italian, French, and Arabic being spoken), exotic European locales, objective portrayals of both sides of the conflict(can anyone really sympathize with terrorists? Here, we understand their frustration, but never their actions), an intriguing and timely story, suspenseful music, brutal realism, and great cinematography make this a MASTERPIECE of the genre and one of the BEST films of 2005 along with being one of the most IMPORTANT films ever made. It's surely one of the BEST in Spielberg's amazing library of films. AN INSTANT CLASSIC!! AND A MUST SEE FILM!! User Rating: | ||||||||||
Publicité