In Steven Spielberg’s Munich, the revenge mission is triggered by the 1972 Munich Olympics.
The film, released in 2005, begins with the terrorist attack at the Olympic Games in Munich, West Germany. Members of the Palestinian group Black September took Israeli athletes and coaches hostage, and the crisis ended with the deaths of eleven members of the Israeli Olympic delegation.
Spielberg’s film follows a fictionalized Israeli team assigned to locate and assassinate people believed to have been involved in planning the attack. Eric Bana plays Avner Kaufman, the team’s leader.
Munich is a historical drama rather than a documentary reconstruction. Its screenplay was inspired partly by Vengeance, a book by George Jonas, and the film emphasizes moral uncertainty, retaliation, and the continuing consequences of political violence.