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Avg. Critic Score: 74 out of 100 Generally favorable reviews Metascore® based on all critic reviews
Information for Parents:
16 Iffy for 16+
Read Common Sense Media review

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

  • 100
    Entertainment Weekly | Owen 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
    Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

    As a thriller, Munich is efficient, absorbing, effective. As an ethical argument, it is haunting. Read full review

  • 90
    The Hollywood Reporter | Kirk Honeycutt

    A mesmerizing, richly nuanced inquiry into Israel's revenge of the Munich massacre of its athletes. Read full review

  • 90
    Los Angeles Times | Kenneth 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

  • 88
    USA Today | Mike Clark

    This is a smart and often tense work whose ultimate merit isn't completely calculable now. Read full review

  • 88
    Rolling Stone | Peter Travers

    Bana is magnificent in the role. Read full review

  • 80
    The New York Times | Manohla Dargis

    More than anything, Munich is a slammin' entertainment filled with dazzling set pieces and geometric camerawork. Read full review

  • 75
    San Francisco Chronicle | Mick 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

  • 60
    Washington Post | Stephen 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
    Variety | Todd 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

View more reviews for Munich on Metacritic

Information for Parents
Common Sense Media says Iffy for 16+ Complex and powerful movie is for adults only.
What Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that this movie isn't for kids. It deals with difficult ethical, political, and emotional issues, including terrorism, assassination, national identity, and personal responsibility. The film includes graphic violence: a fast-cut, swish-panny reenactment of the 1972 Black September assault on the Israeli athletes in their Olympic Village apartment, TV footage from that standoff, with cuts to tearful viewers (this ordeal serves as flashback material throughout the film). The assassinations portion includes images of explosions; shootings (mostly at close range, one sniper shot as well, resulting in a bloody head); dismembered limbs; bloody bodies; brain matter; a dead woman's exposed breasts and crotch. Characters drink and smoke. One man is left naked and dead following his night with a seeming prostitute (she's a paid assassin); a scene where the protagonist makes love to his wife is intercut with the murders of nine Israeli athletes at the Munich airport.
  • Families can talk about the justifications for vengeance. When does it ever make sense, and for whom? Is it possible to put an end to the cycles of revenge and terror? While the film has drawn some criticism for questioning Israeli counterterrorism tactics, how does it argue against terrorism and endless wars more broadly, as these traumatize soldiers and survivors even as they destroy victims? What challenges and decisions did the filmmaker face in portraying both sides of the story?
The good stuff
  • message true0 Positive messages: Palestinian terrorists kill athletes; Israeli-sanctioned assassins come to question their own counterterrorist tactics.
What to watch for
  • violence false5 Violence: Scary-looking, fast-cut assault on athletes' Munich apartment; a little girl in danger scene; repeated images of shootings, explosions, knifings, and other harsh aggressions that come to weigh on the hero's conscience.
  • sex false5 Sex: Assassin left dead and naked in his bed; woman prostitute killed, with her breasts and crotch exposed; one extended sex scene intercut with murders of Israeli athletes at airport.
  • language false3 Language: Cursing in frustration and anger (f-word).
  • consumerism false0 Consumerism: Not an issue
  • drugsalcoholtobacco false3 Drinking, drugs and smoking: Smoking and drinking (beer, wine, and liquor at dinners and in bars).
An independent nonprofit dedicated to providing families the information they need to help kids thrive in a world of media and technology. © Common Sense Media Inc. 2010. All rights reserved.

Looking for more reviews? Movies.com Critics Say:

Dave White

3.5

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What's good about this: Eric Bana … Read full review See Dave White's on MOVIENAME on Movies.com

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