Did Spielberg at the very least gloss over it by saying there were other teams?
I am not trying to be a Spielberg apologist, just seeing if that line meant anything?
Was Eric Bana playing a real guy or some fictionalized composite? I really don’t know that much about the subject. What would you consider a reliable resource on the web?
Yes when Avner and his contact at Mossad were speaking towards the end of the movie the contact said something to the effect of “You don’t think you were the only team out there do you? This was a big operation.”
I have a couple of questions about a particular scene in the movie. Since it’s kind of an important situation, I’ll spoiler it …
When they go to the Netherlands to kill the female assassin, what weapons were they using? I don’t recognize those. Also, why did it take her so long to start bleeding out of her throat when she got shot with them? Not really important, I’m just curious. All in all, that was probably the most haunting scene in the movie for me because it was just so brutally portrayed.
Those stick things are basically one shot guns I believe. The only reason I can imagine for them to use them would be ease of smuggling into the country. As for why she didn’t bleed for a while IANAD but its possible that she was bleeding internally from the wound. Once the cavity that she was internally bleeding into filled up the only place for the blood to go is out the hole.
I think this was a much better movie than would appear from these comments, I hope none of the readers here miss out on the movie due to this thread. Some of you did not get the movie you hoped for, but IMHO Spielberg scored big here.
Two points/comments that stood out for me (out of many)
1 : I don’t know if the bombmaker guy was asassinated or not, I lean towards accidental. But remember the setup ? He was starting to lose faith in the plan, and wanted to back out. But - more importantly - he was not making bombs in that scene - he was DISMANTLING bombs. He was going in the direction of peace.
2] Remember how they talked about how when you kill one terrorist, six more appear ? Think about the scene towards the end where they went to the fancy house where the terrorists were having the party. Avvner looks through the scope and sees the target, which then morphs into multiple targets in the mirrors. I thought that was brilliant.
Saw it and liked it. The bit asbout the amateur assassins barely coping with inadequate information and antiquated equipment struck me as very realistic, along with the way you couldn’t always tell if some things were arranged or merely fortuitous.
But I couldn’t help thinking, throughout, why are Caesar and Hector attacking the Palestinians?
OK, I’ve re-read some things about the incident, and let’s see if I can answer this one coherently.
The main point to remember about Ahmed Bouchiki–a point which I forgot in my last post in this thread–is that Avner’s team did not kill him. Bouchiki was gunned down by one of the other teams mentioned by Harari at the end of Munich. This team was much different from Avner’s. It was assembled ad hoc, and it was much more tightly reigned in by MOSSAD. The team members had not spent very much time together, and they were under extreme pressure to perform by their handlers, who were in turn under extreme pressure from MOSSAD’s administration. This pressure resulted in hurrying the operation, which resulted in imperfectly identifying the target, hence the tragedy.
Avner’s team, according to the current sources, was actually incredibly successful in its mission. Out of the eleven names given to them, they successfully killed nine. In addition, they killed a female assassin, a KGB agent assigned to protect one of the sanctions, and three bodyguards of another sanction. Three of their own were killed in the process, as pointed out in the movie. They spent quite a bit of time together to the point where they could function as a cohesive unit. More importantly, they were free of the pressures of MOSSAD’s administration and the pressure to perform quickly and recklessly. It actually serves as a fascinating study of the consequences of bureaucracy in intelligence organizations.
I don’t think anyone can fault Spielberg’s intentions, which apparently were to question the endless cycles of attack and revenge between Israel and the Palestinians that have caused so much misery over the past fifty years or so, and the policies of supposely civilized societies that adopt lawless, barbaric tactics to counter percieved threats. Many of the performances were brilliant (Bana’s especially) and the (pardon my french) mise en scene was remarkable. I really did buy into the whole early-seventies ambiance of the thing. So why did the film fall so flat for me?
Mainly, I think there simply wasn’t much that was unexpected, in the story or the motivations of the characters. Maybe I’ve read one too many John le Carre novels, but I’ve seen most everything in this movie before. Once one passes through the atmospherics, what we are left with is a rather pedestrian thriller, with (at least for me) most of the plot points telegraphed well in advance.
I’m also somewhat uncomfortable over the vast number of liberties taken with the actual events described in the film. I don’t normally have too much of a problem with fictionalized films, but this one strays so far from known events that it might have been better to have presented it as entirely fictional.
The whole setup of the assassination team as half-trained semi-amateurs cut adrift in Europe was clearly done to ratchet up the tension and sense of danger, but as the linked Slate article points out, there simply were no such teams fielded in this way. Likewise, I realize that the intelligence organization headed by the Michael Lonsdale character is mainly a plot device to simplify the no doubt complicated means by which information about the assassination targets was obtained, but it was pure fantasy and, frankly, faintly ridiculous.
A special raspberry, BTW, has to go out to the John Williams musical score, which is one of his most bombastic and cliched yet. I really wish Spielberg would give another composer a chance.
Despite the comments above, I’m not saying it’s a bad movie overall, just something of a disappointment. If nothing else, it was at least an interesting departure from most Hollywood output and I’m certainly glad to see that Mr. Spielberg for once has not employed the unbelievably clumsy and sentimental bookending devices that mar so many of his other films.
In this case, I don’t know how anyone can call the threat “perceived.”
OK, so drop the word, then.