Much better than I expected and not at all as pro-Jewish and one-sided as I would have expected from the over-sentimentalist director of Schindler’s List. It actually focuses on the effects of a retributional killing spree of a governmental-hired Israeli hit squad. After the killing of 11 Israeli athletes in 1972, at the Olympics held in Munich, by Black September, a Palestinian organisation linked to the PLO´s Fatah faction, the Israeli government’s Mossad (institute for Intelligence and Special Operations) sends a group of agents to assassinate all of the terrorist leaders of the attack.

As the film develops, doubts begin to rise amidst the hit squad, and they realise they are killing people based on the faith they have in an organisation which ultimately sees them as an expendable resource carrying out their unquestionable orders. Without being presented any strong evidence against the suspects, and victims, of their retaliation, they continue picking them off, one-by-one. Soon they get caught up in an underworld, where information is currency, and they begin to gather black-market-value themselves once the CIA, KGB and PLO start going after them.

An intriguing insight into a world where killing is normal; where some of the agents acting in the name of Israel begin to question the uncertain territory between desensitised work and terrorism which they find themselves in. The hit squad is made up of a rainbow of Jewish activists, with Daniel Craig playing Steve at the blinkered extreme, and the others ranging from a rationalist who needs to see proof, a toy-maker who cannot take the strain and the main character Avner, played by Eric Bana, who is slowly being eroded by the pressures of hunting and being hunted in the name of blind faith.

A mix between action, political intrigue and psychological thriller. Not as mindless as one would expect from Spielberg.