munich

THE FLICK: Steven Spielberg has often expressed his admiration for the career of John Ford, a director whose body of work encompassed over a 100 films and stretched through 5 decades. That kind of prolific output is all-but impossible in today’s Hollywood system, but Spielberg has certainly picked up the pace in the last few years, turning out A.I., Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal, and War of the Worlds in fairly quick succession. Intentional or not, the rather hectic schedule has seemed to reinvigorate him while many of his contemporaries are slowing down. And Munich, rushed into production immediately after the Tom Cruise sci-fi blockbuster, finds the director working with some high-profile political topics wrapped inside a ‘70s style thriller. It’s not always successful, but as with John Ford, there’s something to be said for a director who keeps himself busy. Using the incident at the 1972 Munich Olympics as a jumping off point, during which 11 Israeli athletes were held hostage then slaughtered by a Palestinian terrorist group, Munich follows Avner (Eric Bana) and his team of makeshift assassins hired by Israel to hunt down and kill those responsible for the attack. Tony Kushner and Eric Roth’s screenplay is a truly unique combination of socio-political conflicts and internal motivations structured around a series of clandestine assassinations, scenes that could be the bread and butter of the next Bourne or Bond film. But Munich sucks most of the conventional pleasure out these killings, staging them instead as horrifying terrorist acts made in the name of national revenge. As such, the film is nearly impossible to categorize. Despite the fact that Spielberg and DP Janusz Kaminski cobble their “look” from early 70’s international crime films like Friedkin’s The French Connection and Sorcerer, Munich has a hard time building momentum. The spiritual and emotional ramifications of the “work” Avner is doing in the name of Israel is clearly reflected in home life; a wife and daughter he’s never seen are left to fend for themselves in Brooklyn, NY. And there’s a powerful moment where Bana reacts tearfully to hearing his child utter “Daddy” over a long-distance phone line. But for a director who unerringly hits the emotional mark (often to his own detriment), Munich is curiously dead inside. Its characters are numbed by the work they do and the world they inhabit. Which is more than likely the point. The script emphasizes rather unsubtly the importance of “home” in the Israeli-Arab conflict, and the irony of Avner finding himself ostracized from the very country he was killing to defend. Yet the loftier intentions of Spielberg’s film are rather vague, with some references so culturally specific as to be labeled “coastal.” Is Munich a message for peace or a call to arms? The director maintains an amazing degree of objectivity that, oddly enough, undercuts the power of the film. But one cannot fault the energy and improvisational style which finds Spielberg working at his peak level in nearly two decades. THE FEATURES: Munich arrives as both a single-disc set with no extras other than a brief introduction by Spielberg. The two-disc set, however, includes a good amount of exclusive bonus material (80 minutes worth) in the form of The Mission, The Team (input from the various creatives involved), Memories of the Event (reflections on the ’72 massacre from Spielberg and others), Portrait of an Era (recreating the technical aspects of the ‘70s), The On Set Experience (footage direct from the set), The International Cast (working with the largest speaking cast Spielberg has ever used), and Editing, Sound, and Music. As usual, Spielberg forgoes any sort of scene specific commentary, but the director has a strong presence in each of the six featurettes. As Spielberg special editions go, he provides a good degree of input on his intentions and the specific challenges of the film.