Z/Web

Director: Steven Spielberg

Not a film for the faint of heart, I found the violence in this film to be extraordinarily grim and messy, extremely realistic, not cartoon-like as in action movies. The story itself is grim: after 11 Israeli atheletes are gunned down by Arab terrorists in Munich in the 1972 Olympics, Israel secretly puts together a covert team to hunt down and kill those responisible for Munich. The story is fascinating: it’s a story of revenge and death; it’s a story about the difficulties and dangers of tracking down killers; it’s a story about murder, unjustified and justified (if there is such a thing); it’s a story about the inner workings of governments, of secret black ops, of obeying the orders of your bosses regardless of what horrible thing they tell you to do. Ultimately the film’s a morality play, but unlike traditional morality plays, this one doesn’t have any anwers, only complex questions. Spielberg doesn’t tell us if he agrees with the Israeli play or condemns it: he just provokes us to think about which side we’re on. Obviously terrorists need to be punished, and since they have no morals about killing innocents for the purposes of terror, why should we have qualms about assasinating them? Yet are we bringing ourselves down to their level if we act like them? Those are just a few of the questions the film proposes. It’s a powerful and moving film and one everyone should see. I normally ignore the whole Israeli-Arab thing as I find it dreary and over-complicated and endless, but I was surprised that in this film I was thoroughly entranced by the complexities. There’s a great scene where an Arab and a Jew argue their viewpoints (the Arab thinks the Jew is German) and it brought the faults of both sides to the forefront and makes each think of the other in a different light. Good film.