# Munich- No thread for the new GOOD Spielberg movie?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/munich-no-thread-for-the-new-good-spielberg-movie/337368>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [December 27, 2005, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/munich-no-thread-for-the-new-good-spielberg-movie/337368 "2005-12-27T22:47:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\
**Post date:** [December 31, 2005, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/munich-no-thread-for-the-new-good-spielberg-movie/337368/41 "2005-12-31T04:09:00Z")

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> [@middleman](#):
>
> Is “intrigued” a better word for it?
> 
> I also was impressed by the future James Bond.

Yes and yes.

> [@middleman](#):
>
> I hope they pull a Batman Returns and make the film edgier.

_Casino Royale_ is just the vehicle for that.

The bitch is dead.

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**Author:** ![Equipoise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/equipoise/32/151_2.png) [@Equipoise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Equipoise)\
**Post date:** [December 31, 2005, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/munich-no-thread-for-the-new-good-spielberg-movie/337368/42 "2005-12-31T07:19:48Z")

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> [@middleman](#):
>
> A good flick, but if it wins Best Picture, I would consider it a weak year.

I think (hope) **Brokeback Mountain** is the one to beat. It and **Munich** are currently tied for first place on my Top 10 of the year. I’d be happy if either won Best Picture (though I’d be more happy if Brokeback Mountain won).

It hasn’t been a weak year in movies. Like every year, there are a wealth of good-to-great movies, but only a few of them get the attention they deserve.

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**Author:** ![treis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc79bd/32.png) [@treis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/treis)\
**Post date:** [December 31, 2005, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/munich-no-thread-for-the-new-good-spielberg-movie/337368/43 "2005-12-31T07:31:46Z")

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> [@Stranger On A Train](#):
>
> Um, in the real world, unlike movies about Special Operations teams staring Steven Seagal, things get fucked up. Hitting a real moving target in the dark, under fear and confusion is difficult at best; ditto for setting up booby traps and the like. And you have to bear in mind that these guys weren’t professionals; they were selected because they had the minimal skills to do the job and were not high profile enough to be missed within the Mossad; they were essentially amateurs.

Right, but our heros had little trouble hitting their targets but were apt at dodging bullets themselves. The Bond syndrome. For example:

Bad guy henchman can’t even manage to bring his gun up to shoot but our heros can turn and hit him in the forehead.

> [@Stranger On A Train](#):
>
> First of all, the Mossad team (they were techincally freelancers, all having been officially disavowed by Mossad) were for the most part a strike force. This is what real counterterrorism and counterinsurgency work is like; you use local resources to identify targets and “wet assets” to execute an operation. Although the members of the team portrayed in the movie are largely fictional composites, the bulk of the actual operations followed the historical record, as far as public knowledge goes.

I have no problem with them using local resources and I expected them to. I just object to Louis as an omniscient type source that Avner could rely on. If you were a spy would you continously use the same person for all your information and not bother to corroborate his story? Would you get in the car and drive with someone that has warned you not to work with a government after he finds out that you did?

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]

Methinks you didn’t pay close enough attention: The munitions expert was deliberately blown up; Hanns was stabbed, and the other older member was killed by the freelance woman assassin. While the authority behind those attacks wasn’t named, it was implied to be the KGB or one of their satellite agencies (likely the Bulgarians who were typically employed to do wet work in Europe) as retribution for the attack that killed the Russians. The drunk men who accosted the team in London were clearly CIA. It is strongly implied that Louis and his father sold out Avner and the team to both agencies, each of which had an agenda to stop them from assassinating other Palestinian planners.

Its left up in the air whether that was actually the CIA, it was an accident or who stabbed him. Thats my point in a nutshell. We saw some counterspying action but it was not done in depth. A cople of the team members show up dead and they get revenge. Thats it.

> [@Stranger On A Train](#):
>
> It certainly isn’t a Point A to Point C via Point B plotting, owing in no small part to its relatively strong adherence to actual events, and it certainly isn’t either a fantastical Bond movie nor a jingoistic Tom Clancy adaptation. That may be a thematical weakness in terms of conventional plotting (though as **Campion** notes, the film does pull some very predictable plot twists out of the hat) but it speaks to some willingness of Spielberg to diverge from the sort of simplistic, one-sided, linear storytelling which has marred many of his other dramatic efforts.

Shrug, I thought it was a point A to point B to point C _repeat_ type movie. A lot of the scenes were cliches:

Man leaves woman and young child at home to go do something and ends up missing them. Our hero almost blows up a child/innocent bystander/cripple but gets there just in time to stop it. Beautiful woman in bar ends up being an assassin.

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**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\
**Post date:** [December 31, 2005, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/munich-no-thread-for-the-new-good-spielberg-movie/337368/44 "2005-12-31T13:18:35Z")

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> [@treis](#):
>
> I have no problem with them using local resources and I expected them to. I just object to Louis as an omniscient type source that Avner could rely on. If you were a spy would you continously use the same person for all your information and not bother to corroborate his story?

You’re right. This would never happen in real life. Uncorroborated intelligence gathered by this method certainly wouldn’t be used to justify invading another country halfway around the world.

_sigh_

It’s fun to pretend that you can get corroboration from multiple sources, or use your canny instincts and multitude of listening posts to find and track people, but to paraphrase a certain authority figure, out in the fleet you make do with what you have, not what you’d like to have. Avner, not an experienced field agent and cut off from whatever information sources the Mossad could have offered, used the only point of contact he had. If you noticed, part of Avner’s waning motivation was with regard to his uncertainty about the culpability of his targets and the people which whom he was associating (including Louis & Co.) in order to secure those targets. This was, as previously discussed, to be his undoing, as Louis was clearly playing both, or rather many, sides.

As I said, in the real world, things get fucked up. All the time. See “Bay of Pigs” and “Castro Assassination Attempts” for evidence of such on the part of the supposed professionals at the Central Intelligence Agency. And “professional spy” is almost as much of a misnomer as professional thief; tradecraft and training aside, field agents have to improvise, have to deal with and trust criminals and sociopaths, and often have to operate without sufficient information to make good judgements.

There are certainly valid criticisms of the film, but this isn’t one of them. The confusion and uncertainty about who to trust and how much is a point in the movie’s favor with regard to verisimilitude.

Stranger

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**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\
**Post date:** [December 31, 2005, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/munich-no-thread-for-the-new-good-spielberg-movie/337368/45 "2005-12-31T20:54:05Z")

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> [@Stranger On A Train](#):
>
> As I said, in the real world… field agents have to improvise, have to deal with and trust criminals and sociopaths

According to [this guy](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5066445) Mossad did their own research on and location off targets.

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**Author:** ![middleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9a140/32.png) [@middleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/middleman)\
**Post date:** [January 1, 2006, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/munich-no-thread-for-the-new-good-spielberg-movie/337368/46 "2006-01-01T01:02:34Z")

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> [@Equipoise](#):
>
> It hasn’t been a weak year in movies. Like every year, there are a wealth of good-to-great movies, but only a few of them get the attention they deserve.

I’ve seen most of the “Oscar” films this year. I still need to see Brokeback and Syriana, but the rest seem like in a good year they’d be the 4th or 5th nominee.

What do you consider the films that I may have overlooked?

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**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\
**Post date:** [January 1, 2006, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/munich-no-thread-for-the-new-good-spielberg-movie/337368/47 "2006-01-01T01:27:47Z")

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> [@Equipoise](#):
>
> It hasn’t been a weak year in movies. Like every year, there are a wealth of good-to-great movies, but only a few of them get the attention they deserve.

Sorry, but I have to disagree. I see a lot of films–not just major releases, but many (probably more) independent flicks and imports–and I think it has been a majorly weak year for film. I was pondering this recently as I was watching a subtitled German film on DVD; I’ve scarcely gone to see any foriegn flms this year, as there hasn’t been anything that really captured my interest, aside from the obscure Bulgarian film _Kontroll_. There’ve been a handful of good documentaries, but I can’t think of anything else that really stood out. _Batman Begins_ is one of the highlights of the year, and yet by any standard it is a fairly competent by-the-numbers action/superhero film (albeit better done than most). _The Constant Gardener_–a competent but not groundbreaking Le Carre adapataion–is the best serious-but-not-overwraught, wannabe Oscar material picture this year. (_Brokeback Mountain_, regardless of your opinion, was made for one reason only–'cause it is controversal enough, without actually being too explicit–to stand out as an Oscar nominee.) I think the most entertaining film I’ve seen is _Kiss Kiss Bang Bang_–well worth seeing, but hardly material that would be a Top Ten on any average year–and both the big-budget popcorn films and the niche appeal art-house stuff has been pretty disappointing. The exceptions–like _Downfall_ or _Good Night, and Good Luck_–have been few and far between. And the big budget, above title staring, popcorn sellers–_Flightplan_, _Elizabethtown_, _Mr. and Mrs. Smith_, and especially _The Island_–have all been busts, not only in my critical opinion but commerically as well. (We won’t even mention _Stealth_, which should have been stillborn at conception.)

This was a tired, conservative, fairly regressive year for movies; I can’t think of a single one that is likely to stand out a decade later as a definitive film, either as a mainstream movie or a cult favorite.

Stranger

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**Author:** ![treis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc79bd/32.png) [@treis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/treis)\
**Post date:** [January 1, 2006, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/munich-no-thread-for-the-new-good-spielberg-movie/337368/48 "2006-01-01T01:48:14Z")

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Listen, you are singling out an objection from the many I had. I would have had no problem with an omniscient sort of informant if the movie was about something else. But a significant portion of the movie was about spying. That was the whole problem with the movie. He tried to do too much so everything he did came off shallow.

The Spying. Shallow  
Charecter Development. Shallow  
Israel/Black September. Shallow  
CIA/KGB involvement. Shallow

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**Author:** ![Push\_You\_Down](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/push_you_down/32/9095_2.png) [@Push\_You\_Down](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Push_You_Down)\
**Post date:** [January 1, 2006, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/munich-no-thread-for-the-new-good-spielberg-movie/337368/49 "2006-01-01T02:15:20Z")

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There’s the problem… Treis… The movie WASN’T about spying. The characters weren’t spies. Calling the spying shallow is like calling the aviation in Catch Me If You Can ‘shallow’.  
…This is just silly. Tries say you didn’t like the movie and move on because you can’t seem to defend any of your points in a way that makes sense to anyone else. You call things shallow without giving any sort of example that doesn’t fall apart under scrutiny.

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**Author:** ![treis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc79bd/32.png) [@treis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/treis)\
**Post date:** [January 1, 2006, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/munich-no-thread-for-the-new-good-spielberg-movie/337368/50 "2006-01-01T04:18:37Z")

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> [@Push You Down](#):
>
> There’s the problem… Treis… The movie WASN’T about spying. The characters weren’t spies. Calling the spying shallow is like calling the aviation in Catch Me If You Can ‘shallow’.

Look, the problem isn’t with my writing its with your comprehension. When I say things like:

> [@treis](#):
>
> The concept for the film was simply a mistake. By trying to focus on the actual killing of 4-5 terrorists and the development of the assassination team as people they bite off way more then they could chew. I would have picked one thing to focus on. Perhaps having the team go after one target and make the movie into more of an action/spy thriller movie. Focus on the team as people and their development through many of the killings. Go the spy/counterspy route and involve the KGB and CIA more. Focus on the eye for an eye thing between Israel and Black September. The movie tried to do all of those and there simply wasn’t enough time to pull it off.

And then you say something like:

> [@Push You Down](#):
>
> One moment you are calling for it to be more strictly a spy/action thriller and then calling the level of analysis of the issues it brings up to be “high school level”. Can’t have it both ways.

It shows me that you havent comprehended anything I have said.

> [@Push Me Down](#):
>
> …This is just silly. Tries say you didn’t like the movie and move on because you can’t seem to defend any of your points in a way that makes sense to anyone else. You call things shallow without giving any sort of example that doesn’t fall apart under scrutiny.

Listen killer I have explained why I thought it was shallow. You are the one that is having the problem here not me. I’m not the only one that thinks this, the people that I saw it with agreed with me and **Campion** came away with the exact same impression. You aren’t the authority on deciding whether a movie was good or not so stop acting like it.

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**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\
**Post date:** [January 1, 2006, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/munich-no-thread-for-the-new-good-spielberg-movie/337368/51 "2006-01-01T05:38:16Z")

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I haven’t seen the movie, but from what I’ve read it’s incredibly historically inaccurate.

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**Author:** ![middleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9a140/32.png) [@middleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/middleman)\
**Post date:** [January 2, 2006, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/munich-no-thread-for-the-new-good-spielberg-movie/337368/52 "2006-01-02T00:11:10Z")

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Spielberg said it was not intended to be history, but a semi-fictionalized version of historical event (wordy). He said he chose the “Based on Actual Events” opener rather than “Based on a True Story.”

Does that make a difference?

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**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\
**Post date:** [January 2, 2006, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/munich-no-thread-for-the-new-good-spielberg-movie/337368/53 "2006-01-02T01:03:47Z")

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> [@middleman](#):
>
> Spielberg said it was not intended to be history, but a semi-fictionalized version of historical event (wordy). He said he chose the “Based on Actual Events” opener rather than “Based on a True Story.”
> 
> Does that make a difference?

It just seems a bit…I dunno…Oliver Stonish of him.

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**Author:** ![middleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9a140/32.png) [@middleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/middleman)\
**Post date:** [January 2, 2006, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/munich-no-thread-for-the-new-good-spielberg-movie/337368/54 "2006-01-02T01:22:45Z")

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I like Ron Howard’s response when asked whether he, like Dan Brown in his novel, will begin the film version of the Davinci Code by saying that all the historical events are accurate.

> [@](#):
>
> Howard, by contrast, hopes to defuse the situation by shouting “Fiction!” in crowded theaters. “I’m not opening with that [foreword], let’s put it that way,” he says.

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**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\
**Post date:** [January 2, 2006, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/munich-no-thread-for-the-new-good-spielberg-movie/337368/55 "2006-01-02T01:55:24Z")

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> [@RikWriter](#):
>
> It just seems a bit…I dunno…Oliver Stonish of him.

One can make the same claim about _Schindler’s List_. However, when you have 150 minutes to put a compelling story on screen, it is often necessary to combine, conflate, and occasionally concoct details, situations, and principals in order to make a film thematically consistent in a way that real life tends not to be. One of the favorite WWII films, _The Great Escape_, takes great liberties with the actual events which “inspired” the story; it combines individuals into composites, compresses the timeline of planning and tunnelling to occur over a span of a few months, and essentially creates the American characters from whole cloth. (A few American flyers were in the camp during the early stages of tunnelling but were removed before the escape attempt because they got on far too well with the Brits; the Germans were expecting more friction, which is only implied by Werner’s comments to Henley about the War of 1812.) The Steve McQueen character was a complete fabrication, and the inclusion of the motorcycle chase scenes was done entirely at the behest of McQueen; nonetheless, his attempts and his subplot are what people remember most (and the great theme that Bernstein created especially for his scenes). The actual story while fascinating in it’s own right, would never coherently fit into a three hour running time and cover the salient details and personalities with any coherency.

As for **treis** ’s comments, I’m not quite clear of what to make of his opinon; he seems to stab at one thing and then another without consistency. It’s clear he didn’t like the film–his right, certainly–but one of the major complaints seems to be that it didn’t fit into a conventional actioneer or spy film with a typical three act structure and definitive resolution. That it is not doesn’t make it good or bad in any objective sense, but that lack of structure and sense of confusion appealed to me; it made the film seem more urgent and real, as I could share Avner’s confusion and sense of uncertainty; near the end, his paranoia about who was coming after him–KGB, CIA, his own people from Mossad–was palpable. I also enjoyed the uncertainty demonstrated by the unminted members of his team–their confusion, when they cornered the first target, over whether to shoot. I have to agree that the character development was kind of unsubstantive and motivation was often unclear, and as I said previously, much of the overt symbolism was heavy-handed to the point of shoving it down the viewer’s throat. But as unsubtle as it was in that way, it did at least offer ambiguity and ultimately questoned the moral validity of the team’s mission; for a director like Spielberg who is used to offering pat answers and neatly wrapped up moral lessons, it was quite a surprise, and for that I tend to excuse some of the problems with the way the story was told.

I still contend that Spielberg’s best movie was _Raiders of the Lost Ark_, cartoon Nazi villians, improbable 2000 year old booby traps, and all. It’s hard to imagine a more purely entertaining film.

Stranger

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**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\
**Post date:** [January 2, 2006, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/munich-no-thread-for-the-new-good-spielberg-movie/337368/56 "2006-01-02T02:29:25Z")

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> [@Stranger On A Train](#):
>
> One can make the same claim about _Schindler’s List_. However, when you have 150 minutes to put a compelling story on screen, it is often necessary to combine, conflate, and occasionally concoct details, situations, and principals in order to make a film thematically consistent in a way that real life tends not to be.

THAT I have no problem with. For instance, Blackhawk Down condensed and combined many elements from the actual battle in Mogadishu, but it conveyed truthfully the essence of what occurred. Munich, however, did not do that. It didn’t just condense and combine, it totally changed and even warped much of what happened, and invented new moral and ethical problems while not dealing with the ones that actually existed. I don’t like that, personally, because when someone does that it shows they are more interested in making a personal or political point rather than telling the story of what happened and letting people draw their own conclusions.

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**Author:** ![middleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9a140/32.png) [@middleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/middleman)\
**Post date:** [January 2, 2006, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/munich-no-thread-for-the-new-good-spielberg-movie/337368/57 "2006-01-02T03:37:37Z")

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> [@RikWriter](#):
>
> THAT I have no problem with. For instance, Blackhawk Down condensed and combined many elements from the actual battle in Mogadishu, but it conveyed truthfully the essence of what occurred. Munich, however, did not do that. It didn’t just condense and combine, it totally changed and even warped much of what happened, and invented new moral and ethical problems while not dealing with the ones that actually existed. I don’t like that, personally, because when someone does that it shows they are more interested in making a personal or political point rather than telling the story of what happened and letting people draw their own conclusions.

What’s the old saying? Every “historical” war movie is about the current war.

MASH wasn’t about Korea, it was about Viet Nam.

I kind of agree with you about heavy handed editorializing. It is kind of annoying. Drawing parallels is one thing (Clooney did this well in _Good Night and Good Luck_), but shaping conversations to hit us over the head with a message is quite another.

However, I don’t really know if I agree with you about the criticism of Munich taking liberty with “what happened.” I think the truth is, we still probably don’t know what really happened (Unless you are talking about him fudging events in the public record).

There are differing theories on exactly what Mossad did. So, I think Spielberg fictionalized (and cherry picked) a ton of stuff. He basically took what he chose to believe and then (admittedly) fabricated the rest.

Whether that is responsible film making, I cannot say. But if Spielberg stuck to what we KNEW to be true, I think it would have been a boring film.

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**Author:** ![treis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc79bd/32.png) [@treis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/treis)\
**Post date:** [January 2, 2006, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/munich-no-thread-for-the-new-good-spielberg-movie/337368/58 "2006-01-02T03:44:28Z")

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> [@Stranger On A Train](#):
>
> As for **treis** ’s comments, I’m not quite clear of what to make of his opinon; he seems to stab at one thing and then another without consistency. It’s clear he didn’t like the film–his right, certainly–but one of the major complaints seems to be that it didn’t fit into a conventional actioneer or spy film with a typical three act structure and definitive resolution.

This is hilarious. I have one complaint about the movie, it was shallow. I don’t care that it wasn’t a spy thriller. I care that it was _sorta_ a spy thriller, _sorta_ a movie about Israel/Black September and it was _sorta_ a movie about the teams’ mental transformation. You and **Push** for some reason took “its shallow” to mean “it wasn’t a spy thriller flick.” Nothing could be futher from the truth. I could have just as easily enjoyed a drama about the teams’ mental transformation but that just wasn’t there.

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**Author:** ![MessyPaint](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@MessyPaint](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MessyPaint)\
**Post date:** [January 2, 2006, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/munich-no-thread-for-the-new-good-spielberg-movie/337368/59 "2006-01-02T04:21:42Z")

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how do they provide backdrops for old shots of new york. do they act in front of a green screen and then just insert the backdrop later by computer?

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**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\
**Post date:** [January 2, 2006, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/munich-no-thread-for-the-new-good-spielberg-movie/337368/60 "2006-01-02T04:24:25Z")

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> [@middleman](#):
>
> However, I don’t really know if I agree with you about the criticism of Munich taking liberty with “what happened.” I think the truth is, we still probably don’t know what really happened (Unless you are talking about him fudging events in the public record).

I think that enough actual Mossad operatives have come forward to say what happened, warts and all, that at least a general idea is pretty clear. One thing is for sure: they killed the wrong man in one instance and some of them spent time in jail for it. I think that would have been a more poignant and dramatic end for the movie, and it would have had the advantage of being true.

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