DVD | Munich

Rating: R16 - Contains Violence & Sex Scenes.
Duration: 157 mins.
Genre : Drama.
Actors: Mathieu Kassovitz, Ciaran Hinds, Hanns Zischler, Eric Bana, Michael Lonsdale, Geoffrey Rush, Daniel Craig, Yvan Attal, Mathieu Amalric, Ayelet Zorer.
Release Date: Available now.

Munich is Steven Spielberg’s attempt at retelling the shady events that followed the Munich Olympic Games hostage disaster. He actually manages to keep the movie fairly unbiased for the most part, and delivers a compelling drama of a country out for revenge.

Of course revenge is often (if not always) a misguided adventure – violence only begets violence, and as the movie shows, one act of violent revenge only leads to the other ‘side’ taking it’s own violent revenge. Pretty soon the situation is out of control.

The movie’s central character is a Mossad agent who has sold his soul to Israel. In his eyes Israel can do on wrong. Thus he doesn’t hesitate when offered the assignment to assassinate 11 people believed to have been behind the Munich kidnapping. In reality, he soon discovers everything is not so cut and dry, and over the course of the movie starts to question the validity of what he is doing.

The movie plays out like a poorly designed roller coaster ride. It is punctuated with moments of sheer exhilarating action, but is troubled by long stretches where nothing seems to be happening. This may be an attempt by Spielberg to attach some reality to the situation – after all this is no Bond movie – and in reality much careful planning would have gone into each hit. But what Spielberg seems to forget is that the medium he chose to use to tell this story is film, and at a staggering 157 minutes, there should have been a bit more left on the editing room floor.

Along with moments of nothing there are some very poignant scenes were questions are raised, moral issues brought to the fore, and this helps redeem the movies lengthy meanderings.

All in all you have to approach this movie as a drama, and not the action movie the trailers seemed to be promoting.

Food for thought
The common response to violence is more violence, but is violence ever really justified?