Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a spy who has seen Steven Spielberg's MUNICH. I can't tell you how excited I am to see this movie. Here's some word on the flick! I see it next week and I can't friggin' wait!
Hi --
You posted one of my reports a month or so ago regarding Spielberg's Q and A at USC. I just got back from a screening of Munich, if you want a short review for your site. There may be a few very minor spoilers.
To begin, I have to temper my review: this is a very complex film, and I'm not sure if I really "got" all of it. My opinions regarding certain problems that I mention below might change on a second viewing.
First, the good stuff. There is some awesome cinema here:
1. The film has moments of suspense and terror that are as strong as anything Spielberg has ever put on screen. There is a sequence involving a little girl who inadvertently walks into an apartment that's about to explode, and you won't be able to breathe. Another scene, where a female assassin is cruelly dispatched in an act of revenge, is shockingly brutal, and what she does with the last moment of her life is haunting.
2. Other scenes are pure poetry. There's a great scene when Eric Bana is standing outside on a hotel room balcony. A man who he is supposed to kill steps outside on the balcony next to his, and they begin talking. After seeing the face and hearing the voice of his victim, he then has to go inside and decide whether to go through and give the order to kill. Later, something causes Eric Bana to break down and begin crying (I think it's the first point in the movie when we see him cry). I won't give away what prompts his reaction, but it's heartbreaking.
3. Another fine score from John Williams -- the music is very subtle. It doesn't interfere with the story or blatantly telegraph how you should feel.
4. There is great attention to detail in the production design, and the film really transports you to 1972-73. It integrates a lot archival news reports from the era -- I especially appreciated a Robert Zemeckis-like shot where we see the back of an actor perfectly synchronized with the real person on TV.
5. I love the visual look of the film. It reminded me of The French Connection, The Godfather, and other films of the early seventies, with a lot of zoom shots and a desaturated color tone. I'm suprised that it was shot in a 2:35 aspect ratio, as Spielberg usually works in 1:85.
6. Also, look for a cameo of the World Trade Center.
While many of the sequences are brilliant -- and I mean brilliant -- it didn't, for me, quite add up to a fulfilling whole. In fact, I found a lot of it inaccessible. In particular, Eric Bana's character is very difficult to identify with. His has an ambivalent reaction toward the murder of the Israeli athletes (he shuts the TV off and then sleeps with his wife), but then accepts a job from the Israeli government to leave his wife (who is pregnant) for perhaps years and assassinate those responsible. It's unclear what motivates him, as he doesn't seem driven by revenge (at least at first) or money. Perhaps it's loyalty to his country, but I don't know. His character changes in an interesting through the course of the film, but it's hard to properly gauge that change, because you don't have a clear sense of who he is to begin with. Additionally, there's a bunch of references to his father (who we don't see), but I never understood the significance of thefather. The four agents that Bana teams up are also difficult to identify with. It seems like they suddenly pop into the movie. By the end, I still didn't feel like I got to know all four.
Another problem--the film is very confusing I would estimate that I didn't understood what was happening onscreen about 30% of the time (and I'm a pretty sharp guy). A lot of things aren't explained and characters' motivations are unclear. Perhaps that's intentional, but it keeps you from getting fully involved in the story. At one point, I turned to my friend next to me and asked him if he understood what was going on, and he was as in the dark as I was. After we walked out, we tried to piece together who some of the characters were aligned with and exactly what had gone on in some of the scenes, and I'm still a bit baffled.
In the last hour, when things start to go wrong with the mission and Eric Bana's character becomes increasingly paranoid, I really became wrapped up in the movie. But then it just sort of petered out and ended abruptly. I'm still not sure what to make of the ending.
Also, maybe this is a minor thing, as I know the focus of the film is supposed to be the aftermath of Munich, not Munich itself, but I was disappointed in the way the Olympics sequence was handled (especially after seeing Kevin Macdonald's excellent documentary "One Day in September"). Spielberg chooses to cover the incident largely offscreen, through news reports and reactions of the public. Then, later in the film, he flashes back to the incident a couple of times, where we see things more firsthand (sort of like in Amistad). To audiences unfamiliar with the incident (and I think a lot of people in my generation will be), I'm not sure if the movie properly grounds them in what happened.
Overall, and despite the problems I had, this is a very powerful and topical film, and one definitely worth seeing. In many ways, this is a departure for Spielberg. It's more violent (with the possible exception of Saving Private Ryan), angry, and political than anything he's ever directed, and also features his first onscreen sex scene. I don't think it's quite as strong as Spielberg's other "serious" films, like Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, or Amistad -- but, then again, not many films are.
If you use this, please sign me Marty McSkywalker.
