Munich

'Munich' is Steven Spielberg's latest film, and is based on the true life kidnapping and murder of the Israeli Olympic team by palestinian terrorists at the Munich games in 1972 and the bloody aftermath in which Mossad (the Israeli Secret Service) track down and murder the killers. So much is true; the rest of the film is at best conjecture and at worst gruesome fiction.

Spielberg is one of my favourite directors and I always look forward to seeing his latest films; Munich is no exception. This new film has all the ingredients of great thriller, but somehow for me it doesn't work. Frankly I felt uninvolved throughout the film and worst of all, bored throughout most of it. One of the problems is the length. A film that is over two and a half hours long has to have something to sustain me. This film had very little going for it. Usually good photography can, for me, compensate for a lot of a film's shortcomings, but alas there was little to please the eye. There were some interesting locations: Paris, London etc but all were photographed in such poor colour that they looked drab and characterless; Spielbergs colour pallette being limited to blues, greys and dun.

There is much gratuitous violence too. Spielberg doesn't spare the viewer any of the gory details of the numerous murders, which frankly after the first two lose their effectiveness. I found it tiresome having to watch one murder after another in such graphic detail. If Spielberg wanted to shock me, he failed, because after an hour I had become inured to the violence.

Frankly I couldn't wait till the end of the film. Had I rented it on DVD I would not have bothered watching it after the first hour.

I'm sure the film will find an audience - Spielberg's name will guarantee that, but I'm afraid this viewer won't be recommending it to anybody.