Finally saw it this afternoon. excellent, excellent movie! one of the top films of the year by far.

i can go on about the stregnths of the flim, but id prefer to address the criticism by the jewish community the film has recieved (see WSJ editorial in reply #61.)


First off, ill say that im jewish, lets get that out of the bag. so i looked at the film knowing the criticism i read (and didnt support) and wanted to see the film to form my own opinions.

now granted, the film itself is dealing with a very touchy subject.

jews will often scrutinize any negative media against them, especially considering the feud (or better yet war at this point) with the palestinians. because despite what the general population, and im sure many of you think (i wont refer to the 15'ed responses but...), the jews are not the ones in control of the media. watch the news.... whenever the Israelis are bombed, the news footage always shows the scene of the explosion, broken glass, debris etc. However, when the Israeli's retaliate and respond with an attack, the news will show a dead body or a mother grieving over the coffin her dead child. Peter Jennings was the king of this, as he was married to a palestinian woman and had a distinct viewpoint that did not favor the Jews. You could see his bias in his reporting. I wont get into this debate now, but just realize that the jews dont control media or hollywood like many people think, and thats why they are critical of certain hollywood or media depictions.

with that said, i STRONGLY disagree with the criticism of the depiction of jews in this film. I think Spielberg did an excellent job depicting a very difficult series of events. Dont forget, spielberg is a jew, and when i first heard the complaints, it baffled me why a jew would degrade his own people in his depictions of their actions.

***spoiler warnings***

all of the assassinations in the film were justified as the film started off with the horrific events at Munich and had constant flashbacks and dialog throughout (i guess the WSJ dude slept through those parts of the film since he says we didnt see what happend at munich til the very end. Wrong (C) Charlie Murphy.

However, the BIGGEST MISINTERPRETATION was the fact that the head Mossad (eric bana's character) felt remorse at the end of the film. Now the actual assassin said he felt no remorse, and that bana's depiction of him was not accurate for those reasons. HOWEVER, the jews criticizing the film are claiming he felt remorse for killing the arabs, since they were shown as "family men" or "real people" in the film. Thats such bullshit! He DID feel remorse, but it was because he has become one of the hunted. His wife had just gave birth to a baby girl and he wanted to raise a family and put the past behind him... but he became very paranoid of a retaliation attack against him -like 3 of his fellow men faced and were murdered. He felt remorse for not being able to live a normal life with his wife and daughter- NOT for killing the palestinians. In fact, he says numerous times in the film that all the men responsible for Munich, and other Israeli attacks, deserved what they had coming to them.

Overall, my point is that these jewish groups are very defensive since they are a minority and the media depictions of the events in the middle east arent always in their favor. With that in mind, they are very wary of any media that can be used as propaganda against them. However (and this is the important part), Munich is a film that has been misinterpreted by these critical groups. Rarely (maybe once) did i feel the Jews were depicted as wrong in the film (and i was looking for this throughout the film).

bravo spielberg- you amazed me again.

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