The story of how Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, ordered the systematic revenge killing of all the Palestinians who planned and executed the PLO massacre of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972 is the stuff of legend. This movie brings the legend alive and in a tighter, more gripping and better acted way that Spielberg's "Munich" did. Stephen Bauer, as the lead agent Avner recruited from the army by a senior Mossad officer, is more convincing than the doubt-ridden Eric Bana.
A transfixing moment of the movie is the meeting Avna has with the IDF Chief of Staff and the Mossad Chief with PM Meir. With the nation of Israel hurting from the tragedy of the Olympic massacre, she sums up the dilemma of Israel and of the travails of the Jewish State as it seeks to exist surrounded by hostile enemies. Her steely resolve to extract full revenge for what the PLO is rendered excellently by Colleen Dewhurst.
Whilst the "Sword of Gideon" tracks some of the actual killings, it portrays the dangerous life of a secret agent doing work of this nature. The movie is made more realistic by superb attention to location detail (made easier than "Munich" by being filmed only 15 years after the events). The camaraderie of the team of assassins is disrupted by the loss of various of the team. The movie explores the devastating emotional impact of both the loss of colleagues but of the brutality required to shoot or blow up the enemy. It also explores the complex motivations of people who do such work with particular attention paid to Avner's attempts to leave his assignment and the lengths his Mossad handler went to emotionally blackmail him to stay working for them.
One comes away with an appreciation for the enormous task Israel faces. The moral dilemma of ensuring only terrorists are killed and the operational mantra to avoid collateral casualties at all costs versus the indiscriminate killing undertaken by the terrorist targets highlights the tightrope Israel must and continues to walk. It cannot allow acts of terror to go unmet as its enemies must know they will fight and fight hard, but in a world increasingly hostile to Israel's existence and the way it fights, it must exercise its considerable power and intelligence expertise with caution. The SOG shows this attitude has been front and center in Israeli operational planning for decades.
A transfixing moment of the movie is the meeting Avna has with the IDF Chief of Staff and the Mossad Chief with PM Meir. With the nation of Israel hurting from the tragedy of the Olympic massacre, she sums up the dilemma of Israel and of the travails of the Jewish State as it seeks to exist surrounded by hostile enemies. Her steely resolve to extract full revenge for what the PLO is rendered excellently by Colleen Dewhurst.
Whilst the "Sword of Gideon" tracks some of the actual killings, it portrays the dangerous life of a secret agent doing work of this nature. The movie is made more realistic by superb attention to location detail (made easier than "Munich" by being filmed only 15 years after the events). The camaraderie of the team of assassins is disrupted by the loss of various of the team. The movie explores the devastating emotional impact of both the loss of colleagues but of the brutality required to shoot or blow up the enemy. It also explores the complex motivations of people who do such work with particular attention paid to Avner's attempts to leave his assignment and the lengths his Mossad handler went to emotionally blackmail him to stay working for them.
One comes away with an appreciation for the enormous task Israel faces. The moral dilemma of ensuring only terrorists are killed and the operational mantra to avoid collateral casualties at all costs versus the indiscriminate killing undertaken by the terrorist targets highlights the tightrope Israel must and continues to walk. It cannot allow acts of terror to go unmet as its enemies must know they will fight and fight hard, but in a world increasingly hostile to Israel's existence and the way it fights, it must exercise its considerable power and intelligence expertise with caution. The SOG shows this attitude has been front and center in Israeli operational planning for decades.