Munich
Universal Pictures | Release Date: December 23, 2005 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
74
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 39 Critic Reviews
Positive:
30
Mixed:
9
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
NewsweekDavid Ansen
A superbly taut and well-made thriller that jumps from Geneva to Rome, from Paris to Beirut, from Athens to Brooklyn, each lethal assignment staged with a mastery Hitchcock might envy. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
Munich, Steven Spielberg's spectacularly gripping and unsettling new movie, is a grave and haunted film, yet its power lies in its willingness to be a work of brutal excitement. Read full review
100
New York PostLou Lumenick
Masterful, atypically political - and flawlessly acted. Read full review
100
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
A film of uncommon depth, intelligence, and sensitivity. Read full review
100
PremiereGlenn Kenny
This lengthy, nuance-filled story about how eye-for-an-eye stuff differs from theory to practice is one of the most considered, thoughtful, and involving movies of its kind. Read full review
100
SlateDavid Edelstein
Munich is the most potent, the most vital, the best movie of the year. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
As a thriller, Munich is efficient, absorbing, effective. As an ethical argument, it is haunting. Read full review
100
EmpireIan Nathan
This is Spielberg operating at his peak - an exceptionally made, provocative and vital film for our times. Read full review
91
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
Some will find the surprise pleasant, others unpleasant. Whatever it is, it's the least commercial, most somberly heartfelt movie ever made by the cinema's most commercially successful filmmaker. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
A mesmerizing, richly nuanced inquiry into Israel's revenge of the Munich massacre of its athletes. Read full review
90
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
Breaking from the Spielberg oeuvre, Munich isn't a particularly hopeful movie, but it's a fair and morally dignified one. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Munich's even-handed cry for peace is not an act of equivocation but one of bravery. What Munich has to say, and its ability to say it to the widest possible audience, couldn't be more needed than it is right now. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
For those who only recall Bana from his bland showing as Ang Lee's super-thyroidial meltdown monster, his performance here is a revelation. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Bana is magnificent in the role. Read full review
88
USA TodayMike Clark
This is a smart and often tense work whose ultimate merit isn't completely calculable now. Read full review
88
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
The thorny heart of Steven Spielberg's sober, fact-based political thriller about Israeli retaliation for the murder of 11 Olympic athletes by Palestinian terrorists is the knowledge that vengeance is a self-perpetuating murder machine that drags successive generations into a mire of tit-for-tat bloodshed. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
If Munich raises disturbing issues about Jewish-Arab relations, past and present - and how can it not? - it is also an absolutely riveting tale of the hunt and the hunted. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy Burr
The director can work wonders within his celluloid universe, but when the time comes to hand us back to reality, he stumbles. With this movie, that hurts. Read full review
80
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
More than anything, Munich is a slammin' entertainment filled with dazzling set pieces and geometric camerawork. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
As a piece of filmmaking, Munich is rarely less than gripping. As a political essay, as a brief against despair, it is far less convincing. Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Would you feel anxiety or remorse if you pulled the trigger on Osama bin Laden, however satisfying or even necessary it might be? Munich argues that finding him in our rifle sights would leave any of us a different person. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
With its protracted storytelling, its fuzzy philosophizing and its less-than-compelling leading man, it's far less gripping than the subject matter deserves. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
An unlovable movie. It's morally ambiguous, which means there's no real rooting interest. It's episodic, with the same kinds of episodes repeated over and over, so there's little sense of forward motion. It feels philosophically and politically confused, so there's no message to take from it. Read full review
70
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
Munich is at best a muddled prayer for peace whose weakness stems not from its politics but from the misconception of its main character. Avner is not just a fictional character, but an absurdly improbable expression of Spielbergian schmaltz. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Munich is a Spielberg film for better and worse, a vivid, sometimes simplistic thriller in which action speaks louder than ideas.
70
Film ThreatPete Vonder Haar
Even if it wasn't exactly historically accurate (the film is only "inspired by true events," after all), innocents are killed in the crossfire all the time when these kinds of missions are undertaken, and it's a cop-out for Spielberg to pretend otherwise. Read full review
70
SalonStephanie Zacharek
Munich is both astonishing and frustrating. It's not easy to tell how much of the tone comes directly from Spielberg and how much comes from Kushner, who was called in to polish the script after Roth completed it. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneAllison Benedikt
It's when Spielberg stops trying to think so hard that Munich works best. Though some of the assassination scenes feel a little too choreographed, more "West Side Story" than "Bourne Identity." Read full review
63
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
The failure of a movie that is so good in so many ways leaves me to wonder if Spielberg is up to this kind of complex, multi-tasking story. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
It's a brutal, merciless, somber picture, utterly devoid of the heart-tugging sentimentality that always creeps into even his best films. Read full review
60
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Beautifully made pic will spur newsy media coverage and possible consternation on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, but members of the general public will be glancing at their watches rather than having epiphanies about world peace. Read full review
60
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
If he had told the story straight, without such hedging, and at half the length, it would have borne far more conviction. Read full review
60
Washington PostStephen Hunter
It seems almost disrespectful to weave in a provocative re-creation of the killings -- somehow a massacre of unarmed innocents that shocked the world should be more than just fodder for ginning up the tension at the end of a commercial movie. Read full review
60
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
I cannot remember a moment in this new film that compares, simply in directorial originality, to the work in "Schindler's List." Read full review
50
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
The film is sluggish and repetitive, yet it exerts a certain clinical fascination. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Munich may have value as an act of expiation but not as entertainment or art. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Bouncing about from one flawed movie to another, Steven Spielberg has lost his way of late, and Munich finds him more disoriented than ever. Read full review
42
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Munich is so broad-stroke it cuts itself at every turn. It's also a thoroughly lifeless movie. Read full review
40
Dallas ObserverRobert Wilonsky
It's too turgid and redundant to have any real impact. As a thriller, it barely thrills; as a lecture, it has nothing new to say. Read full review
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