After feeling pretty burned by the last few Spielberg efforts (War of the Worlds, Minority Report, and AI) I wasn’t sure what would happen with him tackling this story. I left feeling depressed and satisfied. This was a masterfully done movie.
If you haven’t seen it, I recommend the documentary One Day in September it will give you an excellent background on what happened during the Munich games.
This movie looks and feels like a movie made during the time period it takes place in. There’s no slick effects or cuts, just straight forward artistic filmmaking.
Every performance is brillant.
The violence is rough and often distrubing. It’s real violence, not glorified.
It doesn’t pick a side because the film explodes the idea that either/any side is right. But it isn’t a message movie it is at its heart a crime thriller. A thriller where the characters are smart enough to examine their actions and the repercussions.
The fallout of these actions effect them personally and effect the world.
There’s only one misstep in the movie in my opinion, and that is a strange juxtaposition of images at the end.
The last image which is simply the New York skyline at the time is such a strong message from a movie about the effects of violent escalation of retaliation.
I plan on seeing it, but it might be after this thread has dropped off the radar. I dimly remember the actual events of the 1972 Olympics, I visited Munich a few years ago and shortly thereafter saw One Day in September. There was something mentioned briefly at the end of that film (and is probably at the beginning of Munich) that I’ve wondered about.
After the athletes were killed, and the surviving terrorists were taken into custody, was the German government complicit in the hijacking that led to the terrorists then being released?
I’ve never heard anything else about that, and if it’s true it seems like it would have been a huge story.
Haven’t seen the film, so I can’t comment on how the film answers your question, but according to everything I’ve seenThe Germans just totally mishandled the situation. All the other nations backed off because they thought the Germans could handle it, and Germans simply didn’t have the skills. I THINK that part of the problem were some of the laws enacted in post-war Germany as a reaction to the abuses under the Nazi’s, but I’m NOT certain of that.
I think it was revealed years later that the whole hijacking and freeing of the surviving Black September members was a ploy by the German govt. and the terrorists to ensure Germany would not be targeted for attack for imprisioning them. I seem to recall one of the German officials confiming it in the movie and that it wasn’t just idle speculation. In the movie Munich when that event happens the character just say “Germany let them go.” But it is pretty clear that the characters are frustrated but have no idea that that is actually the truth and that a deal was made.
The documentary does go into detail about how poorly the Germans handled the rescue. And it’s not just things went badly, it was GROSS negliegence and honestly, the cowardice of the officers involved. When two of the terrorists went to the waiting airliner they were supposed to be ambushed by several officers on board the plane. This would have drawn the other terrorists away from the helicopters and the marksmen would have had clearer shots. The officers on the airliner decided that it was too dangerous so they left the airliner and didn’t tell anyone else. So the two terrorists get on board the airliner and find it empty… realizing that something was wrong they ran back to the helicopters and then all hell broke loose. The worst part is that the Israeli’s weren’t killed until toward the end of the gun battle. These poor men sat tied together in the helicopters while bullets flew around them and rescue was so close. Then they are just slaughtered by the few remaining terrorists.
Does anybody remember that made-for-HBO movie about the same thing, Sword of Gideon? It was a long time ago, but I seem to remember liking it at the time. It was rather disturbing as well.
I remember it well. Overall, I thought it was well done, except for some over-emoting by Steven Bauer. Rod Steiger in particular was brilliant.
My main problem with Sword of Gideon, though, was that it omitted the team’s killing of an innocent civilian, Ahmed Bouchiki. Apparently, the Mossad team had mistaken him for a member of Black September and gunned him down in front of his wife. While I don’t equate counter-terrorism with terrorism, any account or debate about Mossad’s actions in response to the Munich Massacre is ludicrous unless it takes what happened to Bouchiki into consideration.
I’ll probably see Munich this week on my day off. I’m looking forward to it.
Just got home from seeing it and I found it to be B-O-R-I-N-G. The movie starts out awesome with a great blend of new footage along with contemporary news broadcasts. In fact, any scene regarding what actually happened at Munich was very well done. However, after they go through what happened in the olympics and the lead charecter getting his assignment it gets very repeatitive and boring. Basically all that happens is the lead talks to this same guy, he tells him where the next terrorist is and then they go kill him. Rinse and repeat 3-4 times and you have your movie.
All of the terrrorists and their body guards suffer from Bond henchmen syndrome. Line up 30 of them 10 feet from a barn and they will all miss. Although I have to say the Mossad guys aren’t very much better. I think me and my 4 closest friends could have done just a good of job as they did. Information was simply given to them and their operations went off with only slight dramatic hitches.
The whole movie was just shallow. The Mossad agents did simply no spying. All they did was pay this one dude for information and then simply killed the terrorist. There was some counterspying that took place but again, this just wasn’t developed. They talked about the KGB and CIA possibly being involved but did nothing to develop that. All that happened was:
One dude turned up stabbed, one was killed by a female spy and the bomb guy just accidentally blew himself up
I found the movie to be very preachy about the Israel-Palestine situation. Purple Prose in film form that focuses on high school level philosophy. Like the rest of the movie I found this stuff to be very shallow.
A question for other Jewish filmgoers:
The first guy they shoot
is holding his groceries. Milk and blood intermingle when he falls. Does it seem that is a reference to “not seethe a kid in it’s mother’s milk”? Rabbi grumbled about it, but it seems to me to be an obvious symbol of some sort, at least milk representing life and blood death.
Wow. I think you actually made the movie shallow in your own mind.
These guys weren’t spies. These guys weren’t there to gather information. Their mission was to kill the names they were given. The movie was about the effect on someone of having your sole purpose to be murder, whether ordained by your nation or not.
You start with these guys all being eager and devoted to their mission. And you end with almost all of them being damaged and broken from the repeated compromises and risks they are forced to take. They see the futility of their mission.
They go from laughing at the anecdote about the Mossad agent who is so paranoid he sleeps in his closet to the main character so paranoid that he sleeps in his closet.
Calling this movie shallow is like calling Citizen Kane a movie about some rich guy.
Gee no kidding. However there is no terrorist phone book to look up these guys address. You, presumably, would have to do some intelligence gathering as opposed to going to one guy who tells you every single damn thing you need to know.
Like I said, highschool level philosophy not done in depth. They simply didn’t develop this or any part of the movie in depth. All that happened was:
The bomb guy went nuts for about a minute and then got blown up 20 minutes ago. The lead went through a totally unbelievable streatch of questioning his Israeli boss. Please, like a Mossad agent is just going to not reveal his source to his boss. And then he thought the Mossad was coming after him? Come on, thats just beyond belief. Even still, like the rest of the movie they didn’t do this indepth.
That is supposed to be a great revelation or turnaround for a spy?
Way back in February, I posted this thread about my own personal experiences during the Olympics in Munich in 1972. At the time, I thought Spielberg was going to be filming what happened during the Olympics and I was eager to see the film.
From what I understand, the film deals little with the actual events in Munich, and more about the aftermath with Israeli agents tracking down the terrorists. Correct?
I want to see it, and yet I don’t - does that make any sense?
I might wait for DVD, or at least a matinee down the road.
…You mean like hiring an intelligence gathering organization to find out where these guys were? That’s what they did. And since they established that Louis would essentially give them a general location there was a clearly implied off camera series of gathering information and “spying” to find out how best to get to their target.
What honestly would you like to have had them do to make it more indepth? I think that roughly the last hour of the movie being an examination of the repercussions of their actions and the the effects on the world is about a fine amount of depth.
Its called a character arc. We’ve watched the character change. He’s no longer the same person he was at the begining. This is exemplified by the closet scene.
There is a lot of nuance and subtleties in the movie, in dialogue, in shots and even in what isn’t seen.
I’m sorry it seems you missed out.
I watched it with my dad and he made a good point that, at least for him, the centerpiece of the movie was the argument over what to play on the radio.
It was odd that we didn’t see any repercussions – or even a conversation – regarding Louis putting the team up in the same safe house as the Palestinians. Coming immediately after Louis was humiliated by his father, it seemed like an obviously intentional and vindictive act. And yet he never got called to the carpet for it.