A hunt for terrorists -- without heroes or evildoers. 'Munich' is an amoral look at men on a deadly mission.
FILM REVIEWS
Friday, December 23, 2005
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Munich: Drama. Starring Eric Bana, Daniel Craig and Ciaran Hinds. Directed by Steven Spielberg. (R. 167 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)
Steven Spielberg's "Munich" is an unlovable movie. It's morally ambiguous, which means there's no real rooting interest. It's episodic, with the same kinds of episodes repeated over and over, so there's little sense of forward motion. It feels philosophically and politically confused, so there's no message to take from it, and it doesn't have a single movie star in the cast, unless you count Eric Bana.
Yet everything that keeps it from being lovable could be looked upon as a virtue, and everything about it is intentional. Moreover, the episodes, in and of themselves, are compelling, and though the movie runs 167 minutes, it never drags. It ends precisely as it should end, with an extended shot that says more with one image than ever could have been said with dialogue.
In the Spielberg filmography, "Munich" may go down as something along the order of Hitchcock's "Topaz," another chilly, well-made, historically based suspense drama, made as a response to the madness of the world situation. Spielberg's film deals with the aftermath of the 1972 Munich Olympics, in which 11 Israeli athletes were murdered by Palestinian terrorists. A Mossad agent, Avner (Bana), is given a budget, a staff and instructions to track down and assassinate every Arab terrorist involved in the Munich attack, and we follow him and his associates as they go around Europe killing people.
The film's episodic structure derives from the nature of Avner's assignment. At each juncture, he gets a name and a location, plans a killing and carries it out. At first, this begins to seem like a grim version of the old "Chorus Line" structure, in which the story can move only laterally, from dancer to dancer, or in this case, from corpse to corpse. While technically suspenseful, these scenes lack any galvanizing emotion, since Spielberg and screenwriters Tony Kushner and Eric Roth have no stomach for Avner's mission. People will argue whether this is politically wrong, right or just confused, but there's no arguing about the effect of ambivalence on drama. It weakens it.
Yet gradually Spielberg's strategy emerges. He depicts an endless maze of tension and violence and makes it feel suffocating by placing the viewer in the midst of it. Spielberg couldn't care less about the mission the men are on, but he cares about what the mission is doing to them.
Thus, we get scenes of them arguing the moral points of revenge and assassination, as a shorthand way of establishing and tracking the changes in their personalities. Daniel Craig (the next James Bond) plays an instinctive man, not plagued by conscience, a natural soldier; Ciaran Hinds, an intellectual doubter; Robert (Mathieu Kassovitz), a sensitive artist disguised as a bomb maker; and Hanns Zischler, a seemingly emotionless killer, whose facade cracks after a particularly pathetic episode involving the shooting of a frivolous female assassin.
The conversations between Avner and his men seem schematic, done more for our benefit than theirs. For all the screenwriters' straining, the only character to emerge with any complexity is Avner himself. His confusion is Spielberg's confusion. It's the civilized person's confusion. Should he take "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" to the point where no one has any eyes or teeth? If not, what's the alternative in combating terrorists? Doing nothing? In a truthful and decidedly non-movie star way -- Bana traces the progress of a man from assurance to doubt, from an easy conscience to haunted dreams, from someone with the glint of youth and enthusiasm in his eyes to one who can see only death.
The future will pronounce on "Munich" in a way that it will not pronounce on "Rumor Has It" or any of the other movies opening this holiday weekend. No one will remember the others, but "Munich" will be looked to as a popular document from early in America's terrorism struggle. Future events are sure to determine the film's ultimate meaning, but in assessing its ultimate importance and value, it would be a mistake for any present or future critic to denigrate "Munich" for its philosophical inconsistency, its muddled politics or its mix of impulses. Like "Heroes for Sale," a 1933 film made in the heart of the Depression that was all over the map ideologically, "Munich" captures the bewilderment of its historical moment. It's an emotional film disguised as a thoughtful film, an artfully executed wail of frustration. As such, it's the most complete post-Sept. 11 time capsule since Spike Lee's "25th Hour."
One final note: Spielberg begins the film with excerpts from ABC's original live coverage of the Munich slayings. I had a childhood recollection that Jim McKay, known as a sports announcer, did an exceptional job anchoring those broadcasts. It's nice to have that memory confirmed.
-- Advisory: Lots of strong language, nudity and violence -- sometimes in the same scene.
To hear Mick LaSalle talk about "Munich," download the podcast at sfgate.com/blogs/podcasts
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