Munich

Steven Spielberg is probably the greatest living movie director. The man can switch genres effortlessly and always bring his A game. And his movies as a result are very watchable and very, very good. He does get a ton of money at his disposal everytime he goes out there, so why shouldn't they? Munich is a nice mixture of history lesson and thrills that turns out to be quite topical considering we live in the age of TERRORISM. In 1972 a terrorist group, Black September, raided the athlete's village in Munich at the Summer Olympics and held hostage the Israeli athletes ultimately killing them after a long drawn out stand off that was shown around the world on TV.

Munich cleverly incorporates both reinacted scenes from this attack with archival footage featured on ABC anchored by Jim McKay, a young Peter Jennings and Howard Cosell but the focus of this movie is the aftermath rather than this vicious attack in Germany. Munich follows the Israeli governments covert operation to target and assassinate "backers" of this tragic event, many of the who's who in the Arab world sprinkled throughout Europe. Eric Bana, who hasn't impressed me since Chopper, stars as Avner Kauffman the leader of a band of operatives from different countries assembled to take as long as it takes to enact revenge. Bana does a fine job portraying a devoted family man and Israeli who eventually is driven to madness by hunting down human targets. There are elements of the movie that are very Ronin or Mission Impossible in nature, the team of assassins dynamic is a familiar one in action movies, but what makes this movie better than most is the insightful way Spielberg explains what has happened between Palestine and Israeli without giving too much time to think that the movie is preachy. The action is swift and furious, like his Minority Report or War of the Worlds, but more representative of the era, late 70's. Home made bombs replace robots, but the man knows how to make even a blow gun murder seem larger than life.

The close to three hour commitment might scare you off, and it's definitely about 20 minutes longer than it needs to be, but the performances, especially by Geoffrey Rush and Daniel Craig, are of the highest caliber and the story is very engrossing. I'm not saying it's the best movie I've seen this past year, nor is it Spielberg finest work, but it's certainly better than most of the shit our there at the local multiplex.