strangers

Steven Spielberg’s Munich (2005), we’re told, is “based on real events” but that should probably read “very loosely based on real events.” That was relatively clear when the movie was released but has become incontrovertible as time has gone by. I don’t want to get into any of that, though; indeed, I don’t want to get into anything about this mediocre film — except its last scene, which is fascinating. So, obviously, spoilers ahead. Avner (Eric Bana) has been an assassin in a deep-undercover mission for Mossad. He has killed several Palestinians who had been named to him as participants in the 1972 killing of Israeli Olympians in Munich; he has come to question the morality of his job, and has left Mossad and moved with his wife and child to Brooklyn. But this move has not brought the peace he had hoped for: he thinks he is being watched and that his family is in danger. He goes in a rage to the Israeli consulate, from which he is forcibly removed. Soon thereafter he gets a visit from…