- Joined
- Aug 20, 2000
- Messages
- 10,007
I finally rented this film. I started watching it quite late at night and was intending to finish watching it the next day; however, I got wrapped up in the film's narrative and ended up finishing it. In that respect it was a good film. I read the book it was based on years ago. The film follows the main points of the book fairly closely, from what little I remember: except for the completely fictionalised informant family. The scenes were well-acted, but seemed to be just a little too James Bond-like to me. The dinner scene reminded me of the added dinner scene in "Apocalypse Now".
While I did not have any particular sympathy for the Dutch assassin, I still found the scene of her murder to be quite disturbing. In fact, it was the most disturbing scene in the whole film. A person knows she is a cold-blooded killer, but you still feel some empathy with her situation, as you watch her trying to save herself. The actress did a bang up job in the scene. She put more life into the death of her character, in that short space of time, than the other actors put into their characters for the entire film. Her hugging of the cat, as a final act of life was a good touch. There was a kind of desperation there. Like as if she wanted to feel the warmth of life for one final moment. Certainly, the best scene in the entire film.
I think the theme of moral equivalency was somewhat forced upon Spielberg. He would have been unmercifully ravaged by critics if he had been perceived as being on the side of the Israelis. Considering his ethnicity, he had to walk a fine line in order to avoid looking like a mouthpiece for Israeli propaganda. For the most part he succeeded; although, at times I felt he made the Palestinian targets look too innocent. At times, Spielberg definitely made it look like the assassinations had more to do with eliminating "moderates" in the Palestinian leadership than with taking vengeance on the perpetrators of the Munich massacre.
The worst part of this film were the flashbacks to the actual Munich killings. As far as i'm concerned they did absolutely nothing to move the story forward. The flashbacks intercut with him having sex with his wife were particularly pointless. It would have been understandable to see him suffering flashbacks to the murders that he participated in, since he was obviously suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, as well as paranoia. But to have him suffering flashbacks from an event that he never personally saw, or was involved in, was ludicrous. The intercutting of those scenes took me right out of the film. For me, that whole section was one big WTF?
While I did not have any particular sympathy for the Dutch assassin, I still found the scene of her murder to be quite disturbing. In fact, it was the most disturbing scene in the whole film. A person knows she is a cold-blooded killer, but you still feel some empathy with her situation, as you watch her trying to save herself. The actress did a bang up job in the scene. She put more life into the death of her character, in that short space of time, than the other actors put into their characters for the entire film. Her hugging of the cat, as a final act of life was a good touch. There was a kind of desperation there. Like as if she wanted to feel the warmth of life for one final moment. Certainly, the best scene in the entire film.
I think the theme of moral equivalency was somewhat forced upon Spielberg. He would have been unmercifully ravaged by critics if he had been perceived as being on the side of the Israelis. Considering his ethnicity, he had to walk a fine line in order to avoid looking like a mouthpiece for Israeli propaganda. For the most part he succeeded; although, at times I felt he made the Palestinian targets look too innocent. At times, Spielberg definitely made it look like the assassinations had more to do with eliminating "moderates" in the Palestinian leadership than with taking vengeance on the perpetrators of the Munich massacre.
The worst part of this film were the flashbacks to the actual Munich killings. As far as i'm concerned they did absolutely nothing to move the story forward. The flashbacks intercut with him having sex with his wife were particularly pointless. It would have been understandable to see him suffering flashbacks to the murders that he participated in, since he was obviously suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, as well as paranoia. But to have him suffering flashbacks from an event that he never personally saw, or was involved in, was ludicrous. The intercutting of those scenes took me right out of the film. For me, that whole section was one big WTF?
