Now in the theatres: Steven Spielberg's Munich. If you've over 40 you remember all too well the 1972 Munich games, but other than watching the drama unfold on your TV, I, at least, never really thought much more of them after it was all said and done.
With Munich, Spielberg tries to reexamine the events around and after the hostage taking, and to his credit, tries to show both sides of the conflict. Not with equal time, mind you; but he does show both sides, and for the most part he has made a very entertaining film.
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Eric Bana finally gets a chance to show an audience what only directors have seen in him for the past couple of years, and once the politics are set aside, Spielberg does what Spielberg does best: manipulates our emotions for about two hours (and that's a good thing).
I was actually surprised because I was expecting more a political film, but Munich is really an assassination thriller and much more a Mission: Impossible type caper flick than the last two Mission Impossible films were.
I just don't get the organizational snubbing of Steven Spielberg. The Producer's Guild and the Writer's Guild wouldn't give him any love this week when they announced their nominations for their annual awards. Producers and Writers represent both ends of the Hollywood food chain and no film has ever won the Best Picture Oscar without also picking up nods from these two guilds.
Spielberg himself got a Golden Globe nomination for Best Director, but Munich didn't get recognized as Best Picture, a disparity that defies any logical explanation, but then again, we're talking about the foreign press. Even the lowly SAG awards couldn't recognize Eric Bana with a nomination but tossed one to Matt Dillon for Crash (a great movie, but Matt Dillon?)
One theory is Spielberg's Munich, like Peter Jackson's King Kong, opened too late and the voters didn't get the screener DVDs in time to vote on them, and that may well be, but as a former nominating committee member of the SAG Awards, watching a DVD rather than taking a film in on the big screen is not doing your due diligence. I mean, how hard is it to watch a movie?
Another theory: the Curse of Eric Bana. He was in HULK, TROY and THE NUGGET after all. Something sub-natural must be afoot.
But Munich is a very good picture; easily one of the top five to come out of Hollywood this year. Personally, I felt it fell prey to two of Spielberg's biggest foibles: in need of some pruning and the ending sucked, but pound for pound, Spielberg got screwed. I just hope he doesn't retreat to his Batcave and lick his wounds by planning WAR OF THE WORLDS II.
Munich should be seen on the big screen and could be a date film; just don't eat too heavily before hand. It does get bloody. You have been warned.