True, but it is irrational to simply look at just the aftermath without looking at the cause. It would be the equivalent (to expand on a previous example) of opening a war-on-terror-movie with a quick shot of the collapsed Twin Towers and then the rest of the movie depicting American bombers blasting buildings, then concluding it all by showing a plane crash into the towers via flashback. Without the logical flow of cause-and-effect, the observant viewer will notice how this choice of narration feels dodgey and, in a sense, manipulative (like a ninja).

I can understand your sentiment that the actual event was glossed over. And I can also understand the emotions behind a response. Yet what Im saying is that Spielberg’s potrayal was an attempt to rationally look at the aftermath - every action has consequences, and his desire was to record that the end result is not just black and white.

I do agree about the almost lack of any time for the actual massacre. My freinds and I did talk about how it almost seemed to be a sort of ‘prologue’ event.

I do not believe, as some conservative bloggers do, that Spielberg had a biased approach to paint a pro-Palestinian view or even equalize the two. However, I think it can be rationally argued that a response to a situation can be directly proportional to the emotive response to the situation itself: regardless of what the response is (assassinations, war, food fights), it is also important to get a good gauge of the emotional catalyst (the Munich massacre, 9/11, my neighbor pooping in my lawn).

Also, despite what Spielberg has said of “loosely basing” the movie off Vengeance, the too are VERY much similar both in events and in script. Spielberg is guilty of one sin of omission by downplaying the Munich Massacre and guilty of one sin of action in interspersing the tragic with the banal. A sex scene while showing flashbacks of people getting grenaded in a helicopter? What exactly is Stevie trying to say? With no firm grip as to why these men are blowing people up, the movie tediously totters towards boredom and fiction (which the book arguably is, but at least it reads like a history book and not an artsy approach to a terrorist morality play).

Personally, I loved the film. I’ve always advocated the idea that people simply wake up one day and start hating another country is an idiotic worldview - there are always mechanisms at play which cause people to do what they do (which is why I also really liked Syriana).

Now in the case of the movie, I am sure Spielberg’s intention was never to film about the actual event, but what unfolded afterwards. So in that vein, while you can say the massacre was minimalized, I don’t think it was. The movie to me was an investigation into the human psyche, and to a certain degree, on how to respond to lawlessness.

Nothing is black and white, and that is what I got out of the movie.