This film brings up the age-old question of how to respond to violence. Both the Palestinians and the Israelis have done horrible things. The question is how to stop the circle of violence. Killing one enemy simply causes more to spring up in his place. At some point, you just have to let go of your anger and be determined to find a peaceful solution.

Good, but they could have dropped the last 20minutes, and it wouldn’t have lost anything.

I’m still struggling to decide how I really feel about this film: it was well made, well acted, blah blah. But. But?

I confess to knowing pretty much nothing about the historical backdrop: it happened several years before I was born (not that that’s really an excuse!). I’m not sure that mattered: the Munich Olympic events are a backdrop for the events in the film, but the events themselves seem… fictional. Based on truth, perhaps, but still a story.

Is it a deep and meaningful story? Yes and no. Really, I came away thinking this was a film about Eric Bana’s character: his change from naive patriot, feeling duty-bound to leave his pregnant wife to ‘punish’ the terrorist responsible for the Munich attrocities. But the more we see – the more he sees – the more meaningless it becomes. When retribution begets retribution, who is in the wrong??

There were times I felt I could do with someone explaining things to me in this movie. It was just so sprawling, so ‘epic’. The couple in front of me walked out halfway through. We followed one character’s motives very well, but the rest left me almost baffled at times.

And at the end of it, I still see it as a movie about Eric Bana’s character, his love of his wife, his need for home to be a sanctury. And I slightly resent that, given the scope of what I felt I should have taken from the movie.

A thriller where the bad guys don’t wear black hats. The change in Bana’s character, from patriotic and innocent to damaged and confused, is brought out really well by both actor and director. How can Spielberg make this War of the Worlds and then this film in the same year?

well intentioned, but incredibly bad taste. a contemporary movie, paradise now, deals with similar issues in a far more sophisticated manner.

an amendment: gratuitous was the word i was looking for…

this movie was fucking great.

I like political thrillers. And I never saw ET.