 |
|
|
I came to this film more or less expecting a dramatization of the 1972 terrorist attack at the Munich Olympics. Somewhat to my surprise after the first ten minutes it appeared that the account of the incident was over. Although there are two sequences later in the film in which the main character imagines how it must have been during the massacre, the film is not really about the events in Munich. Instead it is about a five-man team of agents for Israeli intelligence that is sent out to track down the PLO perpetrators and kill them. I immediately suspected the film was going to be very much like the 1986 HBO movie SWORD OF GIDEON. I did not realize until later that both films are adaptations of VENGEANCE: THE TRUE STORY OF AN ISRAELI COUNTER TERRORIST TEAM by George Jonas.
The five men are a hand-picked team, though none seems to have had much experience at precisely this kind of work. They are essentially talented amateurs. Eric Bana (of BLACK HAWK DOWN and HULK) plays Avner who was basically an air marshal when he was asked to head the team. He finds himself a denizen of the shadow world of agents and killing with none of his team having the kind of experience or knowledge they would inevitably need. Among the team members are Steve (Daniel Craig, soon to be the new James Bond, here with an Australian accent) and the urbane Carl (Ciarán Hinds who recently play Julius Caesar in HBO's ROME.) This is a humorless account of the serious and dangerous business of assassination. The men find it difficult to make themselves killers or even to accept that that is their occupation. As they go from country to country--Italy, France, Britain, Holland, Lebanon--they have to learn and be comfortable in a world where they are both hunters and quarry, only slowly learning to be either.
This is a nerve-twisting drama of fairly ordinary people dropped into a world in which one never knows his friends from his enemies. In the fog of war one never knows for certain who might be working for whom. One is never sure if at the last moment fate may put someone innocent at the wrong place and time. A high priority is to not injure the innocent. They are both proud and ashamed of their work.
At the center of the story is the question of the morality of murdering murderers. As Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen) says "Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values." And there is the danger that they will find themselves compromising so far that they justify the actions of the other side. And even if their killings are justifiable, do they actually do any good in killing people who will quickly be replaced by others just as bad?
People think that Spielberg's films are light and insubstantial. Yet his MUNICH shows the effects of resisting evil. His SCHINDLER'S LIST shows the result of not resisting enough. Between them they give a bleak outlook. And the best we can do, as SAVING PRIVATE RYAN suggests, is to respect and honor the people who battle in our name to resist such an enemy.
Most of the color is drained from the photography so that it has a chilling and bloodless effect. This film takes place in a world devoid of warmth. The story has the feel of authenticity, though the events of the book it was based on have not been and cannot be confirmed. Still, the story is as intriguing and tense as anything written by John le Carre.
Reader's Comments
Add Your Comment On This Article
|
|
 |
|
