Munich
During the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, eleven Israeli athletes are taken hostage and murdered by a Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September. In retaliation, the Israeli government recruits a group of Mossad agents to track down and execute those responsible for the attack.
Tanalien reviewed
August 9, 2025•
By conventional wisdom, Munich is a film that never should have been made. Its subject matter is hotly contested and fiercely political. It is a three-hour, morally complex film of considerable scale, made on a very crunched schedule, and distributed by two major Hollywood studios.
How many lives must be taken to avenge the ones you lost? In our responses to violence, should we accept any compromises on the values of our nation? If so, where do we draw the line? And how do we hold it?
When the film was released, all sides found fault with the depictions of various groups and its factual basis. While he maintains that he has told this story truthfully, Steven Spielberg is not making a documentary, embedded in the exact methods of spy-craft; other films serve that purpose. Spielberg’s highest goal is to immerse the audience in the story’s emotional truth.
The most famous Jewish director in the world has made a challenging film that ends by pointing the camera back at us. For all the moral qualms we have experienced in Munich, he asks us to delve into our own souls to find the answers that we can live with.