Steven Spielberg’s “Munich” (2005) is an act of courage and conscience.

The film opens with a heart-stopping re-enactment of the kidnapping and deaths of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. It then shows Prime Minister Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen) with her cabinet, stating firmly, “Forget peace for now.” It shows the formation of a secret Israeli revenge squad to kill those responsible. It concludes that although nine of the 11 were eventually eliminated, they were replaced and replaced again by men even more dangerous, while the terrorists responded with even more deaths. What was accomplished?

Eric Bana stars as Avner, a former bodyguard to Meir, who is made leader of the secret revenge squadron. He and his men are paid off the books, have no official existence, and are handled by a go-between named Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush). They use bombs instead of bullets to generate more dramatic publicity.

Avner is assigned only four teammates: Robert (Mathieu Kassovitz), a toymaker, expert at disarming bombs, now asked to build them; Carl (Ciaran Hinds), who removes the evidence after every action; Steve (Daniel Craig), the trigger man, and Hans (Hanns Zischler), who can forge letters and documents. They travel with assumed names and false passports, and discover the whereabouts of many of their targets by paying bounties to a shadowy Frenchman named Louis (Mathieu Amalric).

Eventually Avner meets Louis’ “Papa” (Michael Lonsdale), who has been selling information for years. Papa fought in the French Resistance, and is now disillusioned: “We paid this price so Nazi scum could be replaced by Gaullist scum. We don’t deal with governments.” The family, he believes, is the only unit worth fighting for. His speech is moving, but does he really believe Avner and his money do not come from a government?

The film’s most exciting moments are in the details of assassinations. Plastic bombs are planted, booby traps are baited, there is a moment of Hitchcockian suspense when the team waits for a little girl to leave for school before calling her father’s telephone; they have failed to see her re-enter the house, and are astonished when she answers the phone. Then the team tries to prevent the explosion.

The teammates move among world capitals. One night, in a comic incident with deadly possibilities, Avner’s men and a PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) team are booked into the same “safe house.” As the operation proceeds, it takes a psychic toll on Avner, who moves his family to Brooklyn, who grows paranoid, who questions the ethical basis of the operation he heads: “Jews don’t do wrong because our enemies do wrong,” he argues, and “if these people committed crimes we should have arrested them.” This has already been addressed in Meir’s early meeting with her advisors, when she says, “Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values.”

Spielberg clearly asks if Israel has risked more than it has gained. The stalemate in the Middle East will continue indefinitely, his film argues, unless brave men on both sides decide to break with the pattern of the past.

Spielberg is using the effective form of a thriller to argue that loops of mutual reprisal have led to endless violence in the Middle East, Ireland, India and Pakistan, the former Yugoslavia, the former Soviet Union, Africa, and on and on.

As a thriller, “Munich” is efficient, absorbing and effective. As an ethical argument, it is haunting. And its questions are not only for Israel but for any nation that believes it must compromise its values to defend them.(SD-Agencies)