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.
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?
You standard old-fashioned wartime thriller which acts as a serviceable but inferior companion piece to The Day of the Jackal (1973), you’re aware of the outcome but the suspense is in getting there. Unfortunately, the exposition in this one is intriguing enough but by the halfway point it’s a snore. And then Larry Hagman appears as an inexperienced American colonel and it descends into silly comedy which I suspect today wouldn’t survive a pre-production script cull; we all know assassination attempts are no laughing matter.
Thank the heavens for Donald Sutherland. This is another case of Donald Sutherland being hired because only he can play a Donald Sutherland type. He’s fabulously nuts in everything and his career appears to be a personal mission in walking off with the movie. His supporting roles always suppose a spin-off picture with him at the fore. He even made the stinker that is Virus (1999) almost bearable.
This is the best thing on YouTube and exactly what the internet is for.
I’m not here to plug the channel and I don’t know anything about the production or its team at all but the show is so well put together it needs to be shared. The depth of research is up there with your contemporary historians and, rather than a simple retelling, the makers actually dig into everything and ponder the what-ifs. I’d take this form of accessible media over a dry academic piece any day, and it’s the intro for anyone interested in the topic; back in the day, all we ever had was the same old insipid, badly researched and produced textbook material regurgitated on the BBC.
We’re up to winter 1941 now and even to this day it’s utterly shocking how close the Wehrmacht made it to Moscow despite all of the setbacks. It’s the greatest and worst event in history. The age of extremes, aye.
Third Reich satire has at its apex the twin OTT delights of The Great Dictator (1940) and The Producers (1967), two films so unabashedly barmy it’s easy to overlook the human element beside (or within) the bawdy farce. Jojo Rabbit (2019) is made, I presume, in the vein of these crackers.
It is a riot at times, taking the piss out of the ludicrous ideology and its glaring contradictions yet outlining its attractions for subscribers. Among the things most difficult to attain in cinema is the seamless veering between comedy and drama and this is the picture’s most impressive achievement, a mastery of tone.
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And an imaginary der Führer karate-kicked through a window in rather cathartic fashion by a 10-year-old member of his own Hitler Youth is quite the enduring image.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 