"Steven Spielberg and an army of well-paid consultants and spinmeisters are pulling out all the stops to promote Munich and fend off damaging criticism of the movie about the murder of Israeli Olympic athletes and the effort to track down the crime's masterminds. The campaign has even included courting family members of the slain men for endorsements to blunt a gathering storm of negative commentary from the likes of David Brooks in the New York Times, Leon Wieseltier in the New Republic and Andrea Peyser in the New York Post."
I haven't seen the movie yet, but it's on my list. Seems like this one and "Good Night, and Good Luck" are prepping for Academy Award PC considerations.
Spielberg has manipulated some of the core facts. One Israeli unit sent to Norway or Finland ended up killing the wrong person. The way they were caught was one member of the assassin team was not an Israeli but Dutch used as a translator. The Dutchman broke protocol by keeping all his receipts i.e. lodging food etc. on the trip to later get reimbursed. The authorities were able to use the receipts to track down the rest of the Israeli team. In the movie Spielberg emphasized that the Israeli commando leader is obsessed with the whole team to keep all their receipts. This is one small part in the movie that the Israeli's say show Spielberg is just making it up as he goes along.
On a side not to Spielberg when I saw Shindler's List I remember how powerful the movie was in showing man's inhumanity to man. Then at the very end when the people were putting the stones on the grave of Shindler Spielberg dedicated the movie to the six million jews killed during the holocaust. I found this rather odd as though Spielberg missed the message of his own movie. The Nazi's did not discriminate in who they murdered. Estimates are around 12 million people went to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps. But for Spielberg only the Jews counted.
