Spielberg Takes On Terror

That does not mean the picture is sedentary. It ranges the world from Paris to Brooklyn, with stopovers in London, Beirut, Israel, Spain (or their geographical stand-ins), and it is full of derring-do and suspense. (Best such sequence: a child innocently answers a call on an explosive-laden phone meant to blow her father to kingdom come.) At more than 2 1/2 hours, Munich allows itself time to efficiently develop character, particularly among Avner's team, which is run--mostly from afar--by Geoffrey Rush's hard-assed executive spook. The assassins include a hot-blooded South African hit man played by Daniel Craig, who is the next James Bond; Ciaran Hinds as his opposite, a meticulous cleanup artist; Mathieu Kassovitz as a toymaker who dabbles in bombmaking; and Hanns Zischler as an expert document forger. None of them have particularly accommodating natures, but the stress of living under constant danger becomes their bonding agent. The cast too came from all over the globe, including Israel and other parts of the Middle East. "It was like going to the U.N. every day," says Bana, an Australian. "There was always plenty of rich social and political discussion, no doubt about it."

Spielberg is at his best in visualizing a world he believes to be more menacing than it has ever been. That is more than a matter of noirish shadows. It is the hint of suspicious movement in the back of the frame, a pan that goes on a few frames longer than necessary, suggesting the possibility of a menace that may be present. Near the movie's end, a casual pan along the Manhattan skyline reveals the World Trade Center buildings. Had to show them, the director says. They existed at a historical moment in the mid-'70s. But there is more than historical veracity at work in that shot. The Twin Towers are the symbols of our new age of high (and endless) anxiety. Maybe there is, as Spielberg insists, no resonance between the fate of the Towers' victims and the fate of a few athletes in long-ago, faraway Munich. But inevitably the destiny of those Towers tinctures our thoughts, however much we wish to deny them. Dutiful men like Avner Kauffman will be sent forth to improvise a response to terrorism, whatever its source. And to live with the unintended consequences of their actions. Any movie that subtly, yet insistently reminds us of this blunt truth about the world we have inherited is worth seeing. And pondering.