‘Munich’ producer Kathleen Kennedy blames the vast right wing conspiracy for the film’s lackluster box office returns to date:
“We live in a time where there is a very loud and strong right-wing constituency that is hellbent on suppressing any of this kind of dialogue. I’ve just been surprised at Hollywood and our own industry. It reveals more conservatism than I thought was there.”
Poor Spielberg!
Read the whole thing here.
Funny.
I enjoyed the movie, all in all, but I don’t imagine it to be anything near Spielberg’s best work. After A.I. and Minority Report, many people said he was channeling Stanley Kubrick; after Munich, I felt like he was channeling Francis Ford Coppola. There were scenes reminiscent of “The Godfather” and shots reminiscent of “Apocalypse Now” but the movie in general (and the scene where Avner’s tearing his room apart looking for bombs in particular) really reminded me of “The Conversation.”
Obviously, Spielberg is trying to make the argument for criminal-court-based justice and against “stooping to their level” with extralegal assassinations. That’s a legitimate and good argument, and I think if you believe in limited government, you should prefer the government working through extraditions and courts rather than giving its agents a license to kill. (Not that I’m morally opposed to a Predator drone strike here and there–I just think it should be an absolute last resort.) We have something the terrorists don’t have–legitimacy–and we should use it whenever possible. In fact, I think they are somewhat jealous of that–in the beheading videotapes, many act as if they are a court with the authority to execute people who are transgressing their laws.
Anyway, I am glad Spielberg is at least putting out a movie that is, however obliquely, about our war on terror. (Other people have pointed out the huge dearth of urrent war-related movies now compared with, say, the World War II years.) But if it was a better and more original movie, maybe more people would be watching it.
I, too, would prefer working through extraditions and courts, but these options were not open to Israelis because the Europeans were not cooperative. Let’s not forget that months after the Munich massacre, the German government let off three of the terrorists who were responsible. They got off scott free! Israelis had no other option but to pursue targeted assassinations.