Movie: Munich *****

And rounding out my freezing night in, Steven Speilberg's Oscar nominated, Munich.

The 1972 Munich Olympics are remembered for many things - US Swimmer Mark Spitz won a record 7 gold medals, New Zealand's rowing 8 won gold, and as a result the world heard God Defend New Zealand for the first time (before then God Save the Queen was played). But of course the event that cast the greatest shadow was the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes.

A group of Palestinian militants called Black September broke into the athletes village and took the 11 athletes hostage, before murdering them all - all the hostage takers were later killed by German police.

Speilberg's film basically covers what happened next.

Mossad (the Israeli secret police) were then ordered by Prime Minister Golda Meir to hunt down and assasinate the 11 people who were behind the attack.

This is some of Speilberg's best work if you ask me, he goes to great length to not condemn either people, pointing out that theyre both as bad as each other. While the group of Eric Bana led Mossad agents are hunting down everyone and anyone, we're continually being told of the revenge attacks by the Palestinians - which are in response to the Israeli revenge attacks, which were in response to....and so on.... You see Speilberg's point.

This is also some of Eric Bana's best work - the key thing is that he comes across as human - bursting into tears when he talks to his newborn daughter etc.

If you ask me Speilberg was robbed. Crash who picked up the Best Picture Oscar, while quite good - isn't a patch on this. The problem of course is that this film is waayyyy too political for the Academy. Also as New Zealander I guess I do look at this from a neutral perspective, and go into watching it with no particular agenda - completely generalising but you could imagine how an American audience would see nothing wrong with Israel's action in taking revenge for an act of terror - not seeing that there would be implications.

I fully recommend this, it gives a new perspective on terrorism, and how nations should react. As the saying goes - an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.