drjimmycooper

I saw this movie at a screening and I'm very mixed about it. In a way, it was kind of bad, and yet also admirable...

It was great to be seeing a big budget film tackle political subject matter. And the film takes great care to present a balanced point of view: there is a strong effort to humanize many of the characters, Arab and Israeli.

But I felt hit over the head with the film's "unbiased" message of peace. Once again, Spielberg buries potentially interesting & adult subject matter with his slick film-making skills and his heavy-handed, "soul of a child" sensibility.

There are some great things here. The acting is pretty great. Eric Bana gives a fine, understated performance. Daniel Craig is magnetic, and several of the supporting actors are excellent and surprisingly authentic, notably Michael Lonsdale.

The production design, sets and cinematography all work together superbly to re-create the early '70s. There aren't many films lately which can truly evoke a specific period. Munich does it almost flawlessly. I really felt transported by the sets, costumes and lighting, it was if I were watching some 30-year old French thriller. The only thing that gave it away were the smooth, dynamic camera moves, many of which, by the way, involved extremely complicated choreography.

There is a visceral excitement to some of the film. YES, it's extremely violent, but a good portion of it is devoted to the suspense and thrill of international spycraft, always a crowd-pleasing subject.

But, as the characters carry out their harrowing missions, the film starts to feel hollow. Considering the fascinating nature of the subject matter, it feels like there's too much slick film-making in place of ideas and/or character development.

There's some good dialogue here and there, but several times, I felt the actors were explaining too much, as if the filmmakers didn't trust the audience to "get it." Once these realizations set in, the film starts to feel way too long...

When the film, later, clumsily reaches for meaning and character depth, it feels forced and too late. Though Bana is very good, the script doesn't give him enough to flesh out his character. There is one scene in particular which is SO OUTRAGEOUSLY BAD, it doesn't even seem like the same movie.

Ultimately, there's no real emotional tug here, and one gets the sense that the same story could have been told more effectively in a shorter film which focused more on the main characters.

But, yet, the film did affect me, mostly for the way it convincingly transported me, through its look and some visual sequences, into its world, evoking thoughts and memories of historical events and the state of our world today.

I think the director and the script were a bad match.

The dynamic shooting style that he so brilliantly applied to City of God feels inappropriate in service of this rather conventional, overlong, dialogue-driven international thriller.

Extreme camera angles and moves are favored over acting and interpersonal drama. These are great actors, but they've been better in other movies. I don't think the director is quite up to the task of directing a mature, "adult" film.

And the script is a bit of a mess as well. Too much preachy, naive & on-the-nose dialogue. And the dialogue is doing too much of the dramatic heavy lifting: too much of the crucial action is off-screen or merely referred to in dialogue instead of SHOWN On screen! It felt like a rough draft of what could have been a much better script.

Fiennes' character is not very well defined, so when the movie shifts from being her story to his, we're not attached enough to him to care.

And there is no real suspense or mystery to his journey: we already pretty much know everything there is to reveal.

This leads to an insufferably boring and overlong second half.

So much talent here, but mismatches and an underdeveloped script sink it.

Don't buy the self-important ads, this one doesn't deliver.

The special effects are great. The horror of mass death and devastation is powerfully rendered and there are some incredibly suspenseful moments. Spielberg is still better at this than his imitators.

But Cruise is miscast, and even though the film tries hard to build a credible family conflict, it just doesn't draw you in. Dakota Fanning is good, however, I don't think she overacted at all.

There's not much variation from scene to scene: The same basic "running & hiding from the tripods" scenario plays out in a few different ways, and there's just the faintest trace of character development.

The ending feels abrupt & the story incomplete. Probably because the defeat of the aliens and the family conflict are not truly integrated.

Still, it's not a bad movie.