I just watched “Munich” and saw it is “Based on true events”.
Does anyone know the source material for the screenplay?
Israeli assassins shooting it out with KGB agents in Athens, murdering a Dutch hitwoman in the Netherlands, the PLO’s most wanted agents living it up in Germany, French mercenaries playing all side against each other by selling information to all of the above…
It just seems so improbable.
I was 3 or 4 years old when the movie takes place (1972-1973) so I have no memory, but did the public hear about any of this, as apparently in Israel (according to the movie) this was open knowledge.
Does anyone have a good place to read more about these events?
Sure, it was based on the non-fiction book Vengeance (1984), written by Canadian writer George Jonas, usingas main source former Mossad operative Yuval Avid (Eric Bana in the movie, although the character uses another name.)
The movie was OK, and although many of the “Human Drama” elements were pretty overwraught (the scene towards the end where the main protagonist was making love to his wife while in his mind flashing back to the bloody carnage he had visited on others earlier, complete with a pained, tortured look of agony on his face, was as hackey and cliche as anything I have ever seen in a major motion picture, truly Jr. High School drama class level stuff, acting Steven Seagal would have been ashamed of) the plot was gripping, all the more so because it was based on actual events.
I have never been the biggest fan of “Spy” genre books or movies, but when they are done well, and especially when they are factually based, they can be both informative and entertaining.
I was in Munich a few weeks ago, and saw a concert at the Olympic complex where the title events took place, and while I obviously knew a little background about the terrorism at the 1972 Olympic Games there, I wish I would have watched the movie before my visit, maybe it would have informed my time there and made it a little more meaningful.
I’ve wondered about the payback killing of the female Dutch contract killer. The movie’s plot section in Wikipedia says this happens on “a houseboat in Hoorn, Netherlands”. This seems like something that could be verifiable, and might be a newsworthy event in a small town, yet I couldn’t find any corroboration while doing an internet search. I would not be surprised if the femme fatale contract killer was fictional.
The women is mentioned in my link above, and the location of Hoorn is collaborated in other places, such as here. So maybe they disposed of the body; maybe the Dutch authorities knew she was an assassin and wanted to keep the things quiet; or maybe it never happened. I’d bet on the first - as a mobile, flammable crime scene, a houseboat seems particularly easy to “clean”.
In the linked article, the source cited for the assassination in Hoorn is George Jonas’ Vengeance book, which is also the source for the Munich movie. So there doesn’t appear to be any other source outside of the Vengeance book to authenticate that this episode happened. For this reason, I remain skeptical about it and think it may be fictional, or heavily embellished, either by the book’s author, George Jonas, or its main source, Yuval Aviv, who is also the book’s main character.
From the Vengeance book’s Wikipedia page (without citation):
There’s another issue besides the lack of citation for some in the intelligence community arguing it didn’t happen. We would have to assess whether the assertions are factual. It was a covert program where Mossad agents violated the laws of friendly countries. There’s a pretty strong motive to lie.