Munchen

Hi folks. Watched that movie, "Munich", the other day. Steven Spielberg masterfully tells the story of the 11 Israeli athletes that were kidnapped and subsequently murdered by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Now I'm neither Israeli nor Palestinian, so the movie did not have an emotional impact on me so much as just feeling empathy for those athletes that were just there to compete and were dragged into a nightmare waged on behalf of diametrically oposed ideologies. The story covers a crack team of Israeli military specialists led by Eric Bana (from that stinker, "Incredible Hulk") that goes undercover in Europe to track down and assasinate each of the terrorists that were involved in the assault. The majority of the movie is a very interesting vengeance story, watching the group meticulously track down and kill several of the terrorists. Their assasinations are almost in humorous in how clumsily and fraught with error they are carried out, particularly all the of ones that involve explosives fabricated by the resident bomb "expert" played by Mathieu Kassovitz (who uncannily looks like a cross between Daniel Stern and Horshack from 'Welcome Back Kotter' - there's your dose of pop culture references for today). The story is a little sketchy in regards to the French informant 'Papa', who provides all of the whereabouts of their targets but also seems to set them up for failure. The ending is a little bizarre also, involving a juxtaposition of the main character having sex with his wife along with scenes of the murder of the Israeli athletes. I guess it's supposed to represent a duality-thing of the taking of life vs. the creation of life. Whatever, Spielberg. Anyway, it's worth a rent so go check it out superfriends.