Munich (DVD)

It's thought provoking, it's balanced and director Stephen Spielberg doesn't waste anytime getting to the heart of the issues or the action. Munich works on a number of levels as an audacious political statement, a tense thriller, and an inspiringly brutal look at two peoples forever caught up in a cycle of violence, constantly drowning in a sea of their own blood.

It's a bleak vision and Spielberg carries it off beautifully, providing us with a clipped and tight back-story, where the Palestinian terrorists invade the Olympic village in Munich, killing two members of the Israeli team and taking another nine as hostages.

The Israeli response is swift and fast with Prime Minister Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen) authorizing a top-secret assassination campaign which will carried out by the security agency Mossad, aimed at wiping out those who had planned the attack. It is left to the hunky Mossad agent Avner (Eric Bana) to emotionally and strategically shoulder most of the burden.

The team is a seemingly innocuous and innocent mix. Daniel Craig's Steve is the group's impulsive hard-liner, a strapping Israeli itching for reprisal, often clashing with Ciaran Hinds' Carl, the cleanup man. There's a sweet-faced bomb expert named Robert (Mathieu Kassovitz), and a thoughtful muscleman (Hanns Zischler).

As Avner cooks dinner, they all get to know one another, hashing out the fine details and the boarder implications for themselves and for the Jewish state. And so the methodological killing begins, yet as Munich progresses, what remains of certainty vanishes, replaced by a thousand conflicting agendas.

This is a world where the rule of the law is superfluous and where allegiances are none, the only constants are mistrust, paranoia, and the need to find more names, which inevitably comes at a price. No one is ever who they are, a drunk on the corner may be CIA, or KGB or the seductress at the hotel bar might be a hit woman.

Spielberg wisely avoids any soapbox speeches, but he does allow his characters to present both sides of the argument: At a safe house in Athens, Avner is confronted with a young Arab who tells him if the desperate need for a Palestinian homeland, a place they can call their own. And back in Israel, Avner's mother tells him that Israel is their land, finally they have a home and they will fight to keep it.

In Munich the themes are universal - the moral imperatives of violence, and in what circumstances can one justify such senseless murder. As Avner and his colleagues continue their operation, they become psychologically immune to it all. Yes - the operation may be successfully carried out, but how long will it be before righteous anger - the anger of the Israelis - can be continued before stumbling into bloody-mindedness? The irony is that in demonizing these Palestinian terrorists, they are themselves acquiring similar gruesome aspects.

It's all about the cycle of violence, a common problem that has plagued the Middle East for generations and will probably continue to do so. Munich deftly shows that everyone has their reasons for hating the other side - whether it is religious intolerance, or the fight over land rights - everyone ultimately thinks they're right, but such a stalemate can never be broken by killing people whatever side of the fence you are on.