Scots Taffer on 16/2/2006 at 03:26

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Okay, so we're into the second month of 2006, but I'm still seeing movies that were (technically) released in '05. Last night I saw Munich.

Steven Spielberg is one of those directors who - for most people in my generation - can never really do any wrong. We'll forgive him an A.I. and The Terminal because he gave us Jaws, Indiana Jones and E.T. - those movies are so ingrained in my mind as perfect pieces of cinema that I find it hard not to be soft on him, even when he makes unweildy boring pieces of shit like A.I.

Munich is perhaps one of the best films Spielberg has done since those early days of cinema, it's definitely the best thing he's done since Catch Me If You Can, and it's way better than that movie. However I will comment at this stage that Spielberg's eye for detail for era-movies is unrivalled, obviously he has a host of people who assist him in this regard, but the grainy movie-stock used for Munich combined with a cinematography that evokes The Conversation, Dirty Harry and many other seminal seventies movies just served to literally transport you back in time to when these events transpired.

Munich is a fragile masterpiece - it's about violence, vengeance, retribution and painful loss, but it's also about the place that home inhabits in your heart, the joylessness of death and revenge, the empty place that results from devoting your life to something that lacks a cause. It does more than talk about the futility of the Israel-Palestine conflict (although this is summed up beautifully in a conversation between two terrorists in a stairwell - very much reminiscent of Heat - yet at the same time, it is a tragic counterpoint because it is evident through the course of their discussion that there can still be dialogue without bloodshed) and the dichotomy of those who are dying for the cause (the terrorists) and those who are continuing the cause (the governments), it questions violence as a means to ending violence and with its final shot drives home the idea that no land will be safe while its people allow it to be governed by bombs and bullets.

As a movie, it is a powerful and unrelenting action/espionage combo. At first the group of assassins start off with this Bond-like bravado and intrinsic professionalism about their job, but as it goes on and time and tension wears them down, and the targets become progressively harder to reach, the walls around each of the men begins to crumble away and this is where the film excels. It's not just about humanising the hunters, but also the hunted - the brief dialogue between Avner and the chap in the hotel on his balcony is so normal and unspeakably plain, that it serves to highlight the cold and calculating nature of both characters at the same time as it shows you their humanity. Even though that man had been part of the Munich massacre, he'll chat amiably with a man on the balcony and make light-hearted jests about the newlyweds getting busy next door, and the man who was disgusted and shaken by the brutal murder of his fellow countrymen, calmly orders the execution.

On that note, the bomb scene in the hotel was perhaps one of the most effective portrayals of short range devastation that I've seen. This is a bleak movie and it pulls no punches. The violence is excrutiating. Bombs have never been this destructive or visceral (body parts hanging from walls). Bullets delivered from almost-laughable bicycle pump guns leave a woman gargling on her own blood. And the tension never lets up. You think it's bad when they are going about the hits which get increasingly fucked up and dangerous, but then once the tables are turned and they are being hunted... It just gets insane.

So I'm not bothering to revise my list or anything, but I'll say that Munich is one hell of a movie and should figure highly on anyone's To Watch List.

Films I've still yet to see that were big 05ers are: Brokeback Mountain (maybe next week), Hustle & Flow, The Constant Gardener, Serenity and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.