Munich

During the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, eleven Israeli athletes are taken hostage and murdered by a Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September. In retaliation, the Israeli government recruits a group of Mossad agents to track down and execute those responsible for the attack.

Spielberg's dramatization of the Mossad reprisals after the 1972 Olympics massacre drew genuine admiration for its craft and moral seriousness, but split critics sharply over whether it actually earns that seriousness — whether its anguished hand-wringing about the costs of state violence amounts to genuine intellectual inquiry or a glossy simulation of it. The loudest arguments were political: conservative and pro-Israel voices accused the film of drawing a false equivalence between Israeli agents and Palestinian terrorists, while some film critics felt the script was too baggy and the characters too thin to carry the weight Spielberg was attempting.