Munich

I stumbled across a recent review in the Times of the movie "Munich", and found it worthy to note that both the review and comments neglected what I considered to be the most interesting aspects of the film. Firstly, I thought it fascinating that the group of Isrealis who crisscross Europe seeking vengeance on the organizers of the Munich killings are chosen specifically for their lack of experience so that they did not pop up on lists of "agents" from Isreal. The theory of the Isreali government was that anybody could be trained to seek and to kill, and therefore the agents were given hardly any information on their targets excepting their names.

You see how nervous the Isrealis are during their first assignment when they finally come to killing their first target. The leader asks repeatedly, "What is your name? Do you know why we are here?". But they complete the mission and continue to eliminate the targets one by one.

I believe it is true that most people are capable of anything. Dump somebody in a stressful situation with high incentive to succeed and they can learn investment banking, master pole vaulting, design a computer chip. Often half of the barrier to entry in any field is artificial complications engineered by humans to convince others that they are not capable. Sometimes those people in the field are afraid of competition, or of losing their uniqueness or "talent".

The other aspect of the movie that stuck with me was the scene near the end in New York. After the guy who works in Isreali government refuses to "break bread" with the former agent, the camera slowly pans south, toward the financial district of Manhattan. And the twin towers come into view, putting the concept of terrorism in a new light as the viewer's thoughts leap into the future. I guess Spielberg is trying to say, "To where have we come? How different is terrorism now?"