Feel-Good Movie of The Year?

I won't lie, I have not been overly impressed by the work of Steven Spielberg lately. "Catch Me if You Can" and "The Terminal" both lacked the passion and care that makes us love him in the first place, and "Minority Report" and "War of the Worlds" felt too overblown, without any of the intimacy that we are usually given by this cinematic maestro. But nothing that Spielberg has done since "Saving Private Ryan" has had the gravitas that Munich has. Nothing since then has had the buildup, either. A troubled set in a politically troubled climate helped create the back-stage edginess to the film, especially considering the film's subject matter. Eric Bana (Hulk) is a former Mossad agent who, after the 1972 Massacre at the Munich Olympics, is tasked with a special mission by Golde Maier: he and three other men must track down and kill several Arabs who they are told "had a hand in Munich." They are given no evidence, but they don't need it. As the mission goes on, the men wear thin, and Eric Bana begins to miss his wife and newborn daughter. In all, the film is a great exploration of civic duty and what we do for what we believe is right. Eric Bana truly gives a great performance as a man who is being destroyed from the inside out with an intensity and depth that should have earned him a nomination for either SAG or the Oscars, but that's another matter. Daniel Craig gives a great performance as well, as an English Jew on the team. Unfortunatley, his character was lacking in depth. He plays an agent who doesn't care who he kills, or why he does it. After all, as he says: "The only blood I care about is Jewish blood." The logic seems a bit thin, but I'm willing to overlook it. Geoffery Roush gives just one of the many great supporting performances in what is a great film, save for one thing: the ending. The film contains many flashbacks to Munich, the most unfortunate of which is at the end, where it is cut between the terrorists in a shoot out and Eric Bana having sex with his wife. Even more unfortunate in Tony Kushner's otherwise great screenplay is definitely the last shot, which is of the World Trade Center, standing ominously behind Eric Bana, and there it remains as he leaves. A seemingly cheap ending to an otherwise great film.

Grade: A-