Ayelet Zorer

Recently watched Steven Spielberg's Munich with Eric Bana. It's a long film, about 2 hrs. 45 min. Eric Bana was great, as were all the other actors, but I was particularly mesmerized by the woman who played Bana's wife, though she was in only a few scenes.

Turns out she's a very well respected Israeli actress. I get it. She was perfect, communicating the whole/soul of her character in seconds. Her name...well, she seems to go by a few. The movie credits her as Ayelet Zorer, but I've seen Zurer and variations of Ayelet too. Her middle name seems stable and is "July." Maybe it was because she was one of the few women who appeared in the film, but I found her performance right on, rich and textured. All in probably less than five or ten minutes of screen time.

As for the film as a whole, it had a lot to say about revenge, whether sponsored by governments or personal...But even government sponsored revenge becomes personal to those executing the mission. And when the hunter become hunted, the unsteady moral ground of the righteous assassin reaches new depths of meaning. "Am I a target?" Yes...the moment you decide to seek revenge.

Terrific film? It's very well done, gristle and all. The assassination scenes varied and reminded me a bit of Saving Private Ryan, in that murder comes in all forms, from the overtly violent to the objectively ridiculous. The assassins presented in this film were not seasoned. They literally stumbled along with natural anxiety, confusion, and awkwardness about how to carry out their killings. As a team, they weren't a well oiled machine, and as sloppy as they were, you expected them to get caught in each scene. This maintained the tension.

Director Steven Spielberg (or does credit go to screenwriter Tony Kushner, who wrote Angels in America) explores these personal themes of murder, terror, revenge, and righteousness.

When the only blood you care about is your own (or that of your people), it brings out the best and worst in you.

Munich (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)

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