Well-balanced piece. Review on Munich Movie

No conflict has occupied the collective conscious of the western world as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in recent time (of course Hamas coming to power has only complicated matters). Therefore, it takes a lot of guts to make a film of this topic and come out looking unbiased. This Steven Speilberg movie conveys the feeling of helplessness, anger, mistrust about their fellow beings and above all a yearning for home that seems to pervade the lives of ordinary Israelis and Palestinians (though either camp would claim they have been misrepresented).

The movie starts, as one can expect, with the kidnapping and assasination of the Israeli athletes at the Munich olympics by the terrorist group, Black September. This results in Golda Meir ordering the Operation Wrath of God - a 20 year long operation according to some - that results in the assasination of the members the organization. The movie tracks one part of the operation led by Avner (Eric Bana) and portrays some of the well-known assasinations generally attributed to operation wrath of God. There are moments in the movie where the main protoganists are shown as having doubts about the usefullness of their mission and the fact that killing one person doesn't necesarrily mean an end to hostilities. There are articles online where former Mossad operatives deny having such doubts. Probably the films defining moment comes in the climax where Avner questions Ephraim the futility of the violence and Ephraim replys, rather sardonically, ''Nails keep growing, so why should I cut them?''

You may like or dislike the movie depending on which side of the camp you are in but it's a movie worth spending your money. You would probably appreciate the movie all the more once you have atleast supercificial knowledge about the conflict in the middle east. Wikipedia would be a good place to start.