As with 9/11, the murderous Black September attack against Israeli athletes at the '72 Olympics in Munich changed everything and nothing. Steven Spielberg's latest film uses the Munich event as a departure point for examining an Israeli response, which, the film suggests, helped lead us to that ever-so-clear, crisp September day four and a half years ago.

"Hate," as Aldous Huxley said, "has what lust entirely lacks: persistence and continuity." It is the persistent and continuous round-robin of barbarism that the Israelis and Palestinians visit upon each other that forms the bedrock of Munich: The struggle between two tribes who claim the same terrain as home, and who refuse to acknowledge the other's historic ties.

The loss of and search for "home" haunts most of Spielberg's films — The Terminal, Amistad, Saving Private Ryan and E.T., even War of the Worlds and AI to a degree — so the director could have something salient to say on the matter of the Middle East. And Spielberg obviously takes pains throughout to be objective. But in hitching this substantial theme to a tale of Israeli "counter" terrorism (has fighting fire with fire ever worked?), Spielberg unfortunately allows himself too much access to the firecracker box under his bed. The humanistic plea that "we all bleed the same" has never been more bloodily stated.

As with Saving Private Ryan beginning on the beaches of Normandy, Munich, too, plunges the viewer immediately into the '72 Munich crisis. As a helicopter explodes in the Palestinians' failed bid to take the kidnapped Israelis out of Germany, the mills of revenge are already grinding in Tel Aviv. Prime Minister Golda Meir and her heads from Mossad concoct a plan to assassinate Palestinian leaders throughout Europe, and invite young Avner (Eric Bana) to lead the operation.

Avner, who reluctantly leaves behind his pregnant wife and home life, lands in Europe to meet his fellow assassins (Daniel Craig, Ciarán Hinds, Mathieu Kassovitz and Hanns Zischler), and becomes somewhat of an inept Mr. Phelps in this mission impossible. The killings take place in the foreground of other televised atrocities between the two factions, and members of the Israeli group find themselves puzzling over some niggling ethical questions, though few that stop them from their appointed rounds.

Spielberg does let us meet the targets, and to a man they seem more interesting than their predators. One translates the Thousand and One Nights, while another is an intellectual serving as a cultural attaché for his landless people. Interestingly, Spielberg has these "homeless" men hunted down in what are impersonal mockeries of home for them, rented flats in Rome or hotel rooms in Athens. The whole world seems to be a refugee center for the Palestinians that the Israelis can invade on a whim.

To find his targets, Avner unwisely makes contact with a shadowy organization that seems to specialize in espionage mayhem. Names are sold to the highest bidder, and, before long, Avner and his own group find themselves hunted. But by whom?

Spielberg's theme, much like modern politics, is lost in the pyrotechnics. One killing leads to another explosion, and so on, world without end. The effect on Avner is not unexpected: He can never go home again. Into two and a half hours of Munich, we empathize.

The ending that Spielberg has chosen for his film is truly mystifying. Avner, increasingly paranoid and unsettled, seeks some nocturnal solace in rutting with the missis. On the verge of orgasm, he begins fantasizing about what the last moments of life must have been like for the Israeli athletes (remember them?) at the hands of their captors. Their murders, in his mind, coincide with his release. Aristotle would undoubtedly think this a very strange form of catharsis, though one that certainly offers needed perspective in the throes of one's own petit mort.