Used to be that two Spielberg movies in the same calendar year was an occasion for a critical game of Goofus 'n' Gallant. Goofus mucked around with CGI dinosaurs; Gallant paid tribute to Holocaust survivors. Goofus glorified grand larceny in the form of a grinning Leonard DiCaprio; Gallant employed Tom Cruise's strenuously furrowed brow in the service of a philosophical treatise on punishment and free will. This year, however, our boy Goofus has gone on holiday. Spielberg's alleged summer popcorn movie transformed H.G. Wells' murderous Martians into an al-Qaeda sleeper cell, imbuing the devastation with such blatant 9/11 imagery that uncomplicated enjoyment became impossible. Now comes the equally allegorical sequel, Munich, in which Mossad's methodical assassination of those responsible for the 1972 Olympic massacre is clearly meant to provide a disquieting reflection on our recent adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. It spoils nothing to reveal that the film's final shot places two actors before a lower Manhattan skyline into which the Twin Towers have been digitally reinserted—historically accurate, to be sure, but also not-so-subtly pointed.
Adapted from George Jonas' 1984 book Vengeance (previously filmed for HBO as Sword of Gideon, or "And Colleen Dewhurst as Golda Meir"), Munich doesn't dawdle for long in the title city, condensing the entirety of Kevin Macdonald's fine documentary One Day in September into just a few harrowing minutes of screen time. Once silky-smooth handler Geoffrey Rush assembles the hit squad and sends them off to collect the requisite eyes and teeth, the picture globe-trots with an almost Bondian verve—not at all inappropriate, since newly crowned 007 Daniel Craig is a key member of the unit. Jetting from Athens to Beirut to Cyprus, with frequent stops in the City of Light for team leader Avner (Eric Bana), who's purchasing pricey intel from a cheerfully corrupt Frenchman (Arnaud Desplechin regular Mathieu Amalric, clearly enjoying himself), our antiheroes successfully off one target after another, at first with no evident compunction. Gradually, however, rivulets of doubt dribble into their worldview, as the cyclical nature of their mission and its attendant countermissions becomes unmistakable.
Since this is a Steven Spielberg movie written by Tony Kushner, there's no question that consciences will eventually commence to clamoring, and that violence will take a reassuringly (by way of disturbingly) horrible toll. Still, these guys are consummate enough artists that they're not inclined to indulge in any clumsy foreshadowing, and Munich was well into its second hour (of nearly three) before I stopped idly wondering what exactly, apart from self-importance, was the difference between this film and, oh, say, The Crow. Moreover, the narrative's unavoidably repetitive structure—arrive, surveil, bicker, formulate, murder, repeat—seems to have worried Spielberg, who works overtime to give each assassination its own distinct flavor. The result is sometimes tonally chaotic, as when a confused and ugly takedown outside an elevator is immediately followed by a glossy exercise in Hitchcockian suspense, with the latter, however thrilling to watch on its own terms (don't pick up that phone, cute little girl!), effectively nullifying the gritty realism of the former.
Despite such mixed messages, plus the occasional Oscar-bait longueur, Munich slowly builds in power and urgency as it goes along—although Spielberg, who can't end a movie to save the world these days, botches the climax of this one as well, intercutting a bloody flashback to the Munich tarmac with Avner screaming in anguished orgasm. If the film is finally absorbing and admirable rather than unforgettable, part of the blame resides with Bana, who has yet to match the maniacal fervor of his breakout role as the title character in Chopper. Originally a stand-up comic, Bana comes to life only as an incorrigible extrovert; ask him to play someone normal and he becomes recessive to the point of opacity. (I still maintain that Hulk might have worked had Bana been cast as Lou Ferrigno instead of as Bill Bixby.) Munich's cri de coeur is predicated on Avner's slow awakening, but Bana in repose always looks like someone in need of a quick nap. Then again, given that dehumanization is the film's sorrowful subject, perhaps a jolt of movie-star charisma would only have been self-defeating.