Munich

Steven Spielberg has let me down, and in a very big way. "Munich" is perhaps the most disappointing movie I have seen all year. Not necessarily the worst, but I had expected so much more. Instead, I was utterly bored through 95% of a nearly-three-hour movie that felt more like three days.

"Munich" opens with Palestinian terrorists taking 11 Israeli athletes hostage in the midst of the 1972 Munich Olympics. Many will point to this event as the focal point for modern day terrorism. After the athletes are killed, the Israeli government assembles a top secret squad of assassins to track down and kill 11 Palestinians who are believed to have planned the hostage taking. This group of five assassins, lead by Avner (Eric Bana), work to locate their prey, now scattered around Europe and the Middle East, and devise ways to kill their targets without killing others. Basically, these guys are assassins with a conscience.

What's truly at the center of the movie is the question of the value of revenge. For each Palestinian the men kill, many others are killed by other terrorist groups. The men begin to question their objective, which eventually makes their job even more complicated. Paranoia also sets in as they realize they are being hunted very much in the way they are hunting. Along the way, Avner deals with his wife and newborn daughter while seeking to find peace at home. Some will call the closing sequence, in which Avner and his Israeli contact debate the effectiveness of continually striking back at terrorists, a heavy-handed way to bring a moral to the story while others have declared it haunting. For me, I didn't need to see a view of the World Trade Center in the background of Avner's backyard to remind me that we are still dealing with terrorism today.

Considering that his last two movies were "Troy" and "Hulk", Eric Bana is outstanding in his role as the increasingly conflicted Avner. The scenery is great, and the assassination scenes are tense. But on the whole, knowing what I know now, I would not go back to "Munich". I give it a D.

"Munich" is rated R with a running time of 164 minutes.