Shmuel Rosner. Why I didn't like the new Spielberg film
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerBlog.jhtml?itemNo=653593&contrassID=25&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=1&listSrc=Y&art=2At the core of the dilemma presented by the new Steven Spielberg film, called Munich, is the question of whether the practice of targeted assassinations is one worth pursuing. However, there is a bigger dilemma. The director hasn't made up his mind if he is against the method for practical reasons or for moral reasons.
Israelis don't speak to one another the way Spielberg thinks they do (they also don't speak English to one another, but what can you do), nor do they behave the way in which he portrays them as behaving. And most of them don't have significant doubts regarding the Israeli government's decision to hunt and assassinate the perpetrators of the massacre at the Munich Olympics.
The film tells the well-known story of the Israeli government's revenge for the killing of 11 athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The Israeli Mossad carried out most of the dirty work, although Israel has never formally acknowledged responsibility for the shootings, explosive booby-traps and raids that killed some 10 Palestinians linked to the Black September terrorist group behind the Olympics slayings.
The movie was "inspired" by the story, as the producers tell us at its onset, but does not stick to it faithfully. The book upon which it was based, Revenge, is highly controversial, and one can't expect the film to draw the correct conclusions when the historical line from which it is drawn is flawed.
The political message is also problematic. Spielberg himself had hinted that the portrayal of events would not be a flattering one to Israel, its aim being to raise questions about the practice of targeted assassinations - both by Israel in its war against its Arab enemies, and by the U.S. fighting its "war on terrorism."