The storyline of Munich is historically based on the Black September massacre of Israeli people during the 1972 Olympics, the Israeli assassins who track down the terrorists and kill them.
This is an easy movie to summon up: it's a good film trying to be great but is by no means a great film. I found it entertaining and I believe that can mostly be traced to the actors in this movie who really helped it to be better than sum of its parts. Bana, Rush, Craig, and Hinds truly help this movie along considering it's directed by Spielberg. Spielberg's last great movie was Schindler's List, since then everything he's done has been over long, reaching for Oscar glory, or politically motivated. He needs to get back to just making movies because his passion for movies has drained out of his previous movies leaving them as good movies but no where great. Munich suffers from this and for the first time in a long time the actors are the ones who rescue a movie.
This movie is polished, extremely polished, from a visual perspective, which doesn't hurt on the eyes as I watched it and only helped to make it entertaining. Spielberg helped to bring the financing for this movie, I'm sure, so the sets, production, costumes, and visual movement of the camera is a lot better than most movies. But like most Spielberg movies, post Schindler's List, Munich fails to fully engage the storyline and characters with the viewer as it works out its morality play. The characters never become more than cliche and just when their about to go beyond their two dimensional character the movie interjects some grandstanding preaching that pulls them back as people, which leaves them nothing more than empty cardboard cut outs. The movie wants to explore some deeps themes but instead of focusing on characters and letting them move through the story, the movie lets the themes move the characters, which is never a good idea. Unfortunately this distant connection with the characters never leaves the movie, like I said above only the actors charisma and ability actually bring these characters to life, with no help from the screenplay. I find that funny because I never wanted to see this movie until I found out the actors who were in it. Even then I said they will help to make this a good movie despite how the direction or screenplay turns out. I knew they would make it a entertaining, and well they did.
So if you're a fan of Eric Bana, Geffory Rush, Daniel Craig, or Ciaran Hinds, you will enjoy this movie despite the long overlong run time, the sloppy script, disjointed tones, over use of themes versus characters, and feeling of preaching instead of telling a story. The end result is still a good film trying to be great, instead of just a film trying to be a film and letting the chips fall where they may.
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