Condemned by Palestinian groups as a malicious work of Zionist propaganda; damned by Jewish organisations for being ‘soft on terrorism’, this well intentioned and Spielbergised account of the Arab-Israeli conflict has something to offend everyone. A blitzkrieg opening sequence condenses the excellent One Day In September into four minutes – eight Palestinians, members of the Black September group, scale the walls of the Olympic village, burst into the quarters of the Israeli athletes and take them hostage. The situation does not end well.
Spielberg, however, is rather less concerned with that fateful day in 1972 than the cycle of violence it inspires. Outraged Israeli premier, Golda Meir, immediately calls for retaliation, and a crack team are duly assembled. The, erm, soulful Mossad agent Avner (Bana) heads up the team, aided and abetted by moody Daniel Craig, worldly Ciaran Hinds, bomb-making Mathieu Kassovitz and supervising officer Geoffrey Rush.
Together they travel around Europe assassinating members of Black September, who as often as not, appear as decent learned individuals. For every killing, Black September takes further action and crucially, the film ends in New York with a shot of the World Trade Centre.
Certainly, Spielberg has made some effort to humanise the Arab ‘others’, but Munich ultimately feels queasily morally ambivalent. Tellingly, the director has omitted the botched killing of an innocent Moroccan waiter from Vengeance, the source novel, and one remarkable sequence illustrates exactly whose side we’re supposed to be on.
When a child runs back into her house where the squad have planted a bomb, Spielberg plays it beautifully – a scene of escalating, heart-pounding. Hitchcockian tension in the steely colours of a seventies spy flick. Being generally decent sorts, the Israeli unit wait until she’s out of danger. Really? Is this in the Mossad handbook?
Even more bizarre is a sex scene near the end, when Bana flashes back to the slaughter in the Olympic village while fucking his wife. Well, huh, and double huh…
Truth is, Spielberg is no Costa-Gavras. He’s a nice bloke with humanist values, but little political insight beyond asking the question ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’ It’s a brave stab at the material, but I could have learned that lesson watching Mars Attacks.