Movie Review - Munich

Eric Bana delivers a wonderful performance as Avner, a man who is assigned the task of leading a team of four men set to avenge the eleven Israeli athletes that were executed by a Palestinian terrorist group known as "Black September". Arguably the most revealing line in the film comes from the father of a man whom Bana employs to help hunt down the parties responsible for the massacre. This father asks Bana, a talented cook, to help him with the family dinner and requests to see his hands. He remarks that Bana's hands, like his own, are too thick to be a cook's and that they both "posess butcher's hands, but gentle souls". This line describes the dichotomy of the two men, who share an aptitude for violent means, but also a love of family as well as a fancy for culinary arts. This line can also be used to describe most of the central characters of the film whose alter egos to their cold-blooded killers, would seem barely capable of harming a fly.

Spielberg brushes each of the characters with broad strokes of personality, exposing the audience and eventually Bana to the human qualities of these men that performed inhuman acts during the dark time of the '72 Olympics. Bana is driven by the haunting images of these executions that play out in his mind in operatic fashion, but the calculating style that he employs to complete his missions eventually gives way to hesitation as he connects personally to his assigned targets. These men are not monsters, but perhaps "gentle souls" like him, resigned to the simpler elements of their lives despite the horrific acts they have committed.

The story is yet another chapter of the unending cycle of bloodshed between the two peoples, as the hunters become the hunted, all inspired by an "eye for an eye" philosophy and quixotic dream of completing a genocidal game plan. Bana's character becomes deeply infected with paranoia as he realizes that his "righteous" actions are not without consequence to his own life, but rather induct him into a targeted fraternity that consists of the men he has disposed of. He is forced to live out his life on borrowed time, no longer able to afford the comforts of a night's sleep and conscience-free engagement with his family. Adding to this inner turmoil is the realization that he has been duped, being brought on as a blind-folded player in a strategic game played by the Mossad who has employed him, rather than being assigned a quest to bring justice to the evil doers that were responsible in Munich. As the story progresses, it is only the loyalty that he feels for his small team that drives him as he begins to see less relation between his manufactured memories of the '72 Olympics debacle and the targets he has set out to destroy.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. It had a great mix of suspense and drama and I felt connected to the characters. Led by a rising star in Eric Bana, I felt they carried themselves with a sense of nobility and purpose, but often questioned the things they had to do. Some of the smaller elements of the film that caught my attention were the gigantic feasts that Bana prepared for the others. When asked why he was made the leader, one of the men replied, "because he makes the best brisket". I enjoyed the scene where he is taken out to see the employer and father (mentioned in the first paragraph) of Luis, a resourceful French character that is able to track down the whereabouts of the men that Bana is looking for. This father immediately loves Bana as he can see similarities to himself and ideals that he once possessed and wished he still had. Finally, I tend to enjoy films that are shot in a lot of locations, especially in Europe as this one was. There was something very appealing about the international scavenger hunt that Bana and his men were on, though I could not imagine doing the things that they had to do.