International espionage thrillers have a certain formula.  Provide a lone agent or a team of agents with a deniable cover, set them lose on a network of enemies in scenic locations, and explosions, chases, and killings ensue.  Eventually, the agent suspects his handlers of having unclean hands, rebels, and emerges triumphant – a morally superior perpetrator of extreme violence.

      Steven Spielberg’s Munich superficially resembles that formula, albeit without the triumphalism of the typical conclusion.  Unlike, say, The Bourne Identity, Munich is designed to raise questions about the end of tit-for-tat retaliation as a means of attacking a terrorist apparatus.

      The result is a powerful, though depressing, serious and controversial film of the sort that rarely comes to Aberdeen amid the flood of fantasy blockbusters, horror schlockfests, and romantic comedies.  In its exploration of the moral ambiguity of clandestine conflict, Munich evokes the same sensibility as Cold War-era John LeCarre novels.

      Munich has been in limited national release for two weeks, so readers may already know that it traces, in fictional form, the Israeli response to the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics by members of the Black September group.  The film’s opening moments are an excruciating wait for the deaths; we know they’ll happen, just not when.  Actual television footage from the real event, along with selective reenactment, provides verisimilitude.

      The main narrative is introduced through scenes of Avner (Eric Bana of Black Hawk Down and The Hulk) and his wife (Israeli actress Ayelet Zorer) watching the siege unfold on their television.  Avner will be tapped by Israeli intelligence chiefs to lead one of several retributive teams which will track down and eliminate the planners of the Olympic attack.

      Avner is the attractive son of an Israeli hero, raised in a kibbutz, and idealistically dedicated to his country (his wife tells him, “You think Israel is your mother”) – characteristics that evidently outweigh lack of experience in clandestine operations.

      Both director Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner (Angels in America) have explicitly stated their attention to offer a more nuanced view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that is certainly achieved, although not so much by the set-piece dialogues that philosophize on the two sides’ position as by the characterizations of various players as we watch Avner and his team knock off one Palestinian activist after another.

      The first three assassination victims, for instance, appear not as bloodthirsty terrorists so much as nice people with varied interests.  One has translated the Arabian Nights into Italian, another a doctor and loving family man, the third a gregarious teacher of Middle Eastern languages. 

      Committed to the ideal, Avner and his group carry out the assassinations without qualms. Later, though, as they take on many of the attributes of those they hunt, various members of the assassin team express misgivings.  The fully committed Steve (Daniel Craig, the next James Bond) argues at one point, “Unless we learn to act like them, we can never defeat them,” but bomb maker Robert (French actor Mathieu Kassovitz) later worries, “Jews don’t do wrong because our enemies do wrong. . . We’re supposed to be righteous.”

      In contrast to the benign Palestinian  targets some on the Israeli side appear from the beginning too ready to embrace the dark side of the shadow war.  Avner’s handler, Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush), cares little for the team’s qualms, threatening Avner when he begins to question the evidence supporting the ordered killings.

      Then there are those with more venial motives, like the mysterious Louis and his “Papa” (French actors Mathieu Amalric and Michael Lonsdale, respectively) who sell information indiscriminately, helping Avner’s band find their targets even as they sell them out to their enemies.

      Because every act has its consequences.  The Munich attack set Avner’s group in motion; the subsequent killings make Avner’s group itself a target, while other Black September retaliations for Israeli actions are announced via TV news reports.  Avner begins to break apart under the stress of his assignment, and other members of the group are picked off one by one.

      The full human toll of the battle is shown through a matched set of intimate scenes between Avner and his wife.  Early in the film, they make tender love. After he returns from months spent hunting down assassination victims, the tortured Avner again has sex with his wife – but now it is a mechanical, violent act, pure physical strain punctuated by nightmare scenes of killing, with Avner oblivious to her presence.

      Addressing events of 30 years past, Munich nevertheless attempts to speak to the moral compromises of today’s conflict with terrorism, as the movie makes explicit with a final shot of the New York skyline prominently featuring the World Trade Center.  Individual viewers may disagree about the degree to which such compromises are necessary, but this film – unlike most escapist “thriller” fare – at least makes us face the question.

 This review appeared in the Aberdeen American News on January 8, 2006.

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This page last updated on January 12, 2006.