Munich (2005)

Today I picked Steven Spielberg's Munich to watch. A movie about assassins running around Europe by one of the best known directors of all time? Sounds good to me! I just wish I realized how long it was before waiting so late to watch it. Munich stars Eric Bana as Avner, the leader of the team of assassins. It's based on real events of the Munich hostage situation of Black September. Avner's team is sent out to deal with the ones responsible for it. Click on the jump for my impressions.


This is a tough film to talk about. So much of it is clearly well done, the acting, the camera work and cinematography. It has all the makings of a great film. The only problem? I just didn't like it. I was so incredibly bored during the majority of this film that I just don't know what to say about it.

Lots of planning, very little action

I expected there to be action being that it's a movie about assassins. And while there is some action, the moments are short and spread out with long gaps of talking and planning. Basically this movie is about all the boring stuff that spies do, and none of it is glamorized like I suppose we're used to seeing in movies. The start of the movie has more action beats and I was into the movie until about the halfway mark. It's around there that the distance between action set pieces become greater and greater, and the actual action itself becomes shorter and shorter. It's around this point that the focus on the film also starts becoming more about the politics of their job, and elements of suspicion start to creep in. To some this may be a good thing, but I really found it boring.

I think that's about all I can say about the movie. Almost nothing held my attention and it was just a huge disappointment. I really thought I'd enjoy this far more than I did. I don't think I'd recommend this to anyone, but if you know that you like serious slow paced political based-on-real-events type movies, maybe this is for you.