Munich. 2005. USA. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Screenplay by Eric Roth and Tony Kushner. With Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, Matthieu Kassovitz. DCP. 163 min.
Steven Spielberg’s meditation on the Black September attacks on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and Israel’s yearslong war of retribution against the perpetrators, is rife with both profound philosophical discussions and tensely choreographed action pieces. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen) assembles a team of Mossad agents, led by Avner Kaufman (Eric Bana), with a simple directive: kill those who organized the attacks, no matter the cost. The assassinations are brutal and inelegant. Old men are shot while carrying groceries, hotel rooms explode in the middle of the night, leaving Kaufman and his dwindling crew triumphant yet broken, hashing out their moral dilemmas over safe-house meals. Spielberg finds uncharacteristic comfort in the ambiguity of the script, which refuses to pass judgment on the attackers or the assassins.