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This film is Steven Spielberg's take on the moral dilemma faced by assassins killing for the sake of their country's morale. If the protagonist was played by a better actor, it might have worked, but the film lacks spark and drags on much too long.

Avner, played by Eric Bana (The Hulk), is a Mossad agent who quits to head a secret unit of assassins being sent to Europe to hunt down the people responsible for the killings of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972. Avner's motives for joining the unit are vague. He appears to passively accept his assignment and doesn't express much enthusiasm for revenge, so when he later begins feeling guilty about the killings, it's hard to understand where this emotion comes from. Bana has to carry the movie to make it work and he's just overwhelmed by better actors playing supporting roles.

Michael Lonsdale and Mathieu Amalric are memorable as the father/son combination heading a group of free-lance agents operating out of Paris. Geoffrey Rush is excellent as Avner's Israeli handler. Daniel Craig, the new James Bond, appears as one of the Israeli assassins. Ciarán Hinds also turns in a fine performance as another one of the assassins.

"Munich" is not one of Spielberg's best efforts. Usually, he draws the viewer into his films by way of emotional attachment to the characters, but with the lead player being a bit of a cypher, it just doesn't work. Still, it's entertaining and worth watching.

This is the fourth film in the Harry Potter series, and the franchise seems to be running out of steam. Not as fresh as the others, this one seems repetitive in its story line and almost tedious. At a running time of over two and a half hours, it drags at times.

The threesome of Harry, Hermione, and Weasley are now in their mid-teens and beginning to show interest in the opposite sex. The story line about Harry facing up to the dark forces that killed his parents is advanced some, though a final resolution is obviously being left for a future film. Some well-done computer imaging almost makes up for the lack of a good plot.

The supporting cast is pretty amazing. The best actors in British film play a variety of roles. Ralph Fiennes shows up near the end as the evil one, Lord Voldemort. Miranda Richardson plays a ditzy gossip columnist, Rita Skeeter. Brendan Gleeson is introduced as a crazy one-eyed professor. Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Gary Oldman, and Jason Isaacs all return in roles played in previous Potter films.

I think the director tried to cram too much into the film, but overall, it's good entertainment. Future films will certainly deal with the confrontation with Voldemort and the question of any love interest between Harry and Hermione, but I hope the next director eases off on the special effects and gets a good scriptwriter instead.

Mission Impossible III (Roman numbers, no less) is a standard action film with lots of stunts and non-stop .... well, action. Action is the key word because if you're looking for character development or deep meaning, you've checked out the wrong film.

Tom Cruise plays an agent in the Impossible Missions Force, which puts him in the same league as Team America. His mission, should he agree to accept it (duh), is to take down an evil arms dealer and recover "The Rabbits Foot." No, I'm not making this up.

My biggest problem with this film is that it offers nothing new. We've seen this picture under different titles about a hundred times. It's standard fare all gussied up with clever stunts and computer animation.

Tom Cruise isn't my idea of an action hero. He's too short and not rugged enough. He was terrific as the creepy hit-man in "Collateral," but he doesn't project as the larger than life character necessary for this type of film. Philip Seymour Hoffman is the evil arms dealer, which is another stretch. Ving Rhames and Laurence Fishburne play minor parts in what amounts to casting overkill.

MI3 is decent entertainment and not the worst way to spend an evening, but if you're expecting to see acting that's above the cartoon character level, you'll be disappointed.