Munich (2005)

The current conflict in Iran which nobody but Trump wanted has prompted me to take a look at what is probably Steven Spielberg's most controversial film.

This film centers on the massacre of Israeli athletes by a Palastinian militia at the 1972 Olympics in West Germany, which left all the hostages and the perpetrators dead. This leads the Israeli government to send groups throughout Europe to terminate Palestinians who had a hand in planning the horrific siege. From that point on, the movie centers on a fictitious quintet of these troops, led by Avner Kaufman (Eric Bana). But the moral ramifications of doing his duty soon begins to catch up with Avner, who just became a father shortly before the Munich massacre. As a result, he begins to wonder if he is any better than the people he is being ordered to terminate and, slowly but surely, the other four men on his team-Steve (Daniel Craig), Carl (Ciaran Hinds), Robert (Matheiu Kassovitz) and Hans (Hans Zischler)-begin to feel the same way. Munich became controversial mainly because it attempts to humanize both sides of this conflict. After all, the Nazis in Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade aren't exactly portrayed as complex. But this is why I applaud Spielberg for making a film such as this, to illustrate how reality cannot always be defined as 'good guys' or 'bad guys.' The film's conclusion is also appropriately ambiguous, especially given how events in the Middle East have unfolded in the decades since the 1972 massacre.