Short Round: Munich (2005) ****/*****

The last decade or so of Spielberg’s career has been a blind spot for me. I think I just had to take a step back from the man after that last fifteen minutes of A.I. We need a break, it’s not me, it’s you. Lately I’ve been filling that hole in though, and I have to say I’ve been pretty disappointed. Catch Me If You Can was pretty, but a bore. Minority Report was shallow and ordinary. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, let’s not talk about Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Holy cow is Munich pretty badass though. I wouldn’t have thought that Spielberg had it in him to get this violent. He showed that he could do a movie without any of the trademark warm fuzzies when he made Schindler’s List, but this is a whole other level of dark that he’s hitting. The focus on brutal kills makes Munich slip easily into revenge film territory. I scoffed at the idea of him producing a remake of Oldboy before seeing this, but now I’m giving that second thought. Here we see the director of E.T. not just getting political or historical, but sad, bleak, and mournful. These aren’t emotions that I knew he had in him, and it’s nice to see something new from the legend. Eric Bana isn’t an actor that has particularly impressed me before this, but he does great work here. He plays the emotional struggle and the divided loyalties of his character pitch perfect, always giving us a glimpse into his internal strife but never intentionally projecting in an Oscar grubbing, showy way. And he shows that he could make a solid action star to boot. If any of us get laid tonight, it’s because of Eric Bana in Munich, indeed.