I'm kinda with arsaib on this one.

Classic Spielberg

Admit it Spielberg is an entertainer first and foremost. Surely one of the most technically impressive filmmakers (perhaps only behind Scorsese), he specializes in entertainment. Films were the good guys win, bad guys lose, and all throughout it's done with a certain level of style. Spielberg's greatest fault has always been to play to the common denominator. He doesn't seem to have much if any respect for the average filmgoers intelligence, and has never made films for anything but the masses. His films are consistently full of really hokey touches (the War of the Worlds reunion, the "Give us our free" speech in Amistad, Elliot getting sick with ET) but we come to expect them, and although I for one certainly cringe you have to realize who you're dealing with.

Munich is entertainment. Due to it's release date it is going to be associated with the art house market, just as Amistad another history lesson for people who never read a history book was. American history might be a particular strong point of mine, but the events of the Munich games aren't. I chose not to refer to it as a massacre, because well the whole mess is a little too muddled.

Eric Bana, who's been kicking around Hollywood's B-list for a few years now is perfect for Spielberg. A face that is familiar but not a huge movie star. After Cruise in War of the Worlds, I suppose Spielberg was a little tired of the big A list movie stars. He wants his assassin to be just that, and Bana is like his character, just enough under the radar to pull off this role. Nothing in any of Bana's previous efforts though hints at his ability as an actor, and for this reason I may have to credit Spielberg the director. Bana gives a fantastic performance here, arguably the best male performance of the year, although I did find the year a little weak for actors. He changes throughout, from self confident to self doubting, from patriotic to exiled, Bana makes his work masterful.

Is the film perfect? Of course not, few if any films are (Well maybe Kane). It is slightly flawed but not to any extreme extent. I'll admit I found the second sex scene to be very poorly done, and as someone here has pointed out, embarassing. I chose not to view the film as anything close to a political picture, because Spielberg never has been a political filmmaker and this film's politics are too simple to make it intriguing. This is a man whose previous political statements were nothing more than caricatures of nazis with pitchforks and horns. The enemy here is a little less drastically evil, and Spielberg makes at least a few attempts to show their side of it. I can applaud him for his first touch of humanism.

The film is great however, much like I found Minority Report and Catch Me If You Can great. It is good filmmaking. It could be better no doubt, and the 164 minute run time pushes it, but I found the film to be quite capitivating. There is a command of suspense, and a general interest in the characters. I also compared this film to Syriana, and I find this infinitely better. Syriana tries to let the audience figure it out, when really it's an overambitious director saying he doesn't know what the hell he's doing maybe you can tell him. Spielberg knows what he's doing and is very calculating, therefore I not only knew all the characters in the film, but what they were doing, and a lot about them. Syriana perhaps could have benefited from Munich's longer running time, perhaps that film wouldn't have been so uncaptivating and pointless.

Like Syriana though Munich is a film that is going to have Hollywood patting itself on the back for "daring" to make. It is really pointless for this self congratulatory nonsense, because let's face it the US hates Arabs, and these films are little more than officially sanctioned racist pictures. Look at history and check some of the WWII films and how they show the Japanese. It was socially acceptable then to hate them, and it's socially acceptable here to hate Arabs, even though they'll never admit it. Perhaps that final shot of the Twin Towers is the filmmakers way of saying "@#%$ you camel jockies". In the process saying that it's not the Jews fault. I'd rather not read too much into it, but let me know if I'm completely high and insane for thinking the way I do about this countries attitude towards Arabs.

Grade A