Munich (on DVD)

2005’s Munich is a rare adaptation – it cuts very little from the book it was based on. The book is 1984’s Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team, written by George Jonas with the help of a former Israeli Mossad agent named “Avner”. The Israeli government has categorically denied the story in the book and I don’t expect we will ever hear the whole story from any official source. Mainly cutting the personal stories in the book, Steven Spielberg focuses his attention on the operation by Avner’s group. After the infamous Olympic village massacre in Munich, Israeli government sent out groups of “former” Mossad agents all over the world to carry out state-sponsored assassinations of terrorist leaders. In the movie, Spielberg depicts almost every single attack carried out by Avner’s group. I can only tell that one car bombing in the book is missing from the movie. Spielberg captures the essence of the book – revenge upon revenge only results in endless blood bath. It also depicts well the innate fear and self-doubt that humans possess naturally about any killing, even righteous ones. What sets us above all the other animals is our guild over killing. At the end of the book, all the killings took a heavy toll on Avner’s psyche. His decision to leave the Mossad didn’t sit well with the people there and he was clearly bitter about the whole experience. Money was withdrawn from his bank account and he was left penniless. Writing the book at that time could be both a catharsis and profitable means to support his family. Apart from a few small changes to make scenes more dramatic, Spielberg follows the book very faithfully, but as a movie, it is simply too LONG. It could have been better as a TV mini-series and Spielberg could have concentrated on one killing per episode. I am also not a fan of John Williams’ score. Spielberg has a tendency to depend on Williams’ melodramatic music to put us into the emotional stage he intends for the audience. I am always a believer in visual images and the filmmakers should have more trust in the audience. Eric Bana plays the lead role, Avner. He has always been more of a hunk than a real actor, but in this movie, he reaches into more depth and reveals more nuances than he has ever done. Putting away the common actor’s vanity, he even makes himself look heinous in a few scenes. In the book, besides the main plot line, Avner constantly had a longing for a normal life in his dream land, America and in the end, he settled into Brooklyn. Sometimes I wonder where the real Avner is now. More than 20 years after the book, peaceful refuges in the world has dwindled to almost none and America has become a new battle ground for terrorism.