Tom's Recommended Film of the Week

Munich

I had borrowed Munich from my son several months ago, but given it's length of 2 hours 44 minutes, it was hard to find time to fit it into a day. The subject matter is what interested me, as the 1972 Olympic tragedy was an event I remember, but the aftermath I know very little about.

From a historical perspective the Black September abduction and murder of Israeli athletes is something we all heard about on the news, but the aftermath in the form of Israeli response was covert and kept from the public eye for many years. Munich, in part, was based on a book by George Jonas published in 1984, Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team, which puported to uncover this covert operation, but Steven Spielberg went further in researching and developing a story designed to touch deeper into all our thoughts and bring up themes very peritent to our world some 35 years later.

Spielberg offers a meaningful introduction to Munich on the DVD I watched and I would recommend seeing this before viewing the film. But even without his comments any viewer will be able to taste the conflict within the charcaters central to this film. The acting is superb, particularly from Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, Geoffrey Rush and Ciaran Hinds. The story is tense, heartfelt and meaningful. It's a thinking persons film and well worth the extended time frame.