By its climax, it descends into the rather ludicrous in such a far-fetched way that even someone with no basic knowledge of warfare would be aghast at, though it never entertains the farcical.
But I forgive its transgressions as it’s so well put together, the action – no-holds-barred as one would expect from the trailers – is ferocious, and the characters all have their arcs. Most of them aren’t even likeable, which adds to the realism the movie achieves for much of its duration.
And stranger things have happened in war, so our five-member tank crew holding off what seems to be an entire SS division for half a day isn’t that outrageous and insane.
Aesthetically perfect movie with a protagonist’s tunnel vision style that works, an actual reasoning behind it – it’s the antithesis of the self-indulgent. Much more than a ‘noble’, culturally significant picture, it’s as honest with its brutality as you can get, and vice versa. It did recall for me One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and uses all the tools of cinematic technique to tell a story so gripping, relentless, and powerful in its immediacy.
A searing portrait of Hell on Earth, this is not a film you’ll forget.
The opening voice-over reeked of amateurishness – John Lithgow narrating shots of our heroes playing football, describing a wee bit of superfluous info about them all – so I turned it off and watched a documentary about the bomber instead.
The Trinity Test is the centrepiece, and what a magnificent, wholly cinematic build-up and pay-off it is, pure controlled mayhem in its visuals and sound.
The rest? I was bored shitless. Most vexing, and this includes seeing the bumbling Tom Conti as Albert Einstein and Gary Oldman as Harry S. Truman in two of their most cringe performances to date, was the unbearable reliance on appointment hearings and that security clearance interview, and the incessant cutting back and forth, an overlong spy-chasing vignette which I found mostly tiresome. We all know politicians are vile; there’s nothing especially innovative in showing us all over again.
I craved more spectacle as well as insight into how this deadly weapon was actually made, that and a longing for a Terrence Malick approach to the material. It was so talky but with no memorable dialogue, and I got a bit sick of it – I was genuinely disappointed. As for the eponymous protagonist, I simply found him boring, and every time the camera lingered perversely on his sunken cheekbones a sense of resigned ennui is how I would describe the atmosphere.
A stunning technical achievement though it all is, I didn’t find it particularly revelatory, and I won’t be watching it again.
It also didn’t help matters that I was sadly sat beside a large, rather whiffy individual who breathed like an asthmatic hippo, ate like a gannet, and decided to take his shoes and socks off. I had to endure this for almost three hours.
This really was a wasted opportunity, the gift of a premise – two snipers in a dance of death amidst the backdrop of the bloodiest battle in history – compromised by a pointless romance, daft politics, dodgy accents, and a complete misunderstanding of the time and place depicted.
It would have been better to not tackle the complexity of it all and just show the antagonists facing off, with allusions to the wider ideological foes.
The first 10 mins, though. Watch those and then turn it off. Here you go:
How does this even exist? The cast is something out of a piss-up, a charades gone wrong. Sly, Bobby Moore, Michael Caine, Ossie Ardiles, Pelé, Max von Sydow. Erm, what? And to boot it’s made by John Huston.
Less interesting is the movie, a run-of-the-mill affair, the footy action shot with all the imagination of your random YouTuber.
But it still fascinates merely by its existence. And that’s why it hasn’t been destroyed. It’s a testament, a relic, if you will.
I was a bit dubious of this because it’s a British production about WWII, which are typically dull, mannered, mawkish, and entirely made-for-TV fare. It saddens me to report that Munich is all of the above and worse. It’s fucking atrocious. I don’t know where the tendency came from to depict these world-historical events from the POVs of superfluous (and entirely made up) secondary characters, but it’s vexing. Maybe just make a movie involving the actual statesmen, nah? This pointless, drama school-level acted show even has its forgettable range of third-wheels hog the screen time.
The screenplay is annoying to the max, every line of dialogue straight out of an alleged quote stemming from an alleged secondary source. One accidental highlight: I was taken aback by a smug-as-fuck SS character who appeared to be doing a very bad impersonation of the August Diehl bad boy from Inglorious Basterds (2009) – he had his voice and mannerisms and looked like him a decade on. It’s a truly embarrassing copycat acting job. And then I realised it was actually him. It’s the only what-the-hell and almost interesting moment of a placid and pointless excursion into revisionism.
Trash. But even cruddier than your usual sort because the topic is important. I’ve read a few reviews and it’s highly regarded, with a whopping 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. What are these critics on?
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 