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MUNICH Steven Spielberg's Munich is largely a fictionalization of the events that transpired after that tragic day at the 1972 Olympics in Germany, when a group of Palestinian terrorists slaughtered the Israeli athletes they were holding as hostages. The movie reveals that the Israeli government sent a select band of assassins to eliminate everyone who was responsible for the massacre. But these characters aren't positioned as Israel's version of The Untouchables, with clear-cut visions of right and wrong. Instead, as they carry out each hit on their eye-for-an-eye agenda, each man reacts differently to the consequences of their actions. Is this brand of retribution just? Or are they in effect embracing the same ideology that drives the terrorists? Spielberg's muddying of the moral waters is already drawing heat, but it's to his credit as a filmmaker of consequence that he asks the hard questions and doesn't flinch from any unsettling truths that might emerge. HHH
THE PRODUCERS Mel Brooks' 1968 movie was resurrected by the comic legend himself as a Broadway musical that scored with critics and audiences alike. That another movie version would follow is no surprise; what's startling is how the picture plays as little more than a static filming of the stage play, barely more mobile than those one-set Shakespeare dramatizations that used to pop up regularly on PBS. Yet director Susan Stroman's staging is by no means a death blow. On the contrary, The Producers functions in much the same way as the recent screen adaptation of Rent by emphasizing melody and mirth over movement -- in fact, it works even better thanks to the presence of master ham Nathan Lane. In the Gene Wilder role of the timid accountant Leo Bloom, Matthew Broderick strains too hard to be funny; Lane, on the other hand, is a riot in the Zero Mostel part of Max Bialystock, the struggling producer who determines that a dreadful show called Springtime for Hitler is his ticket to riches. HHH
THE RINGER In need of quick cash, a struggling office worker named Steve (Johnny Knoxville) is persuaded by his sleazy uncle (Brian Cox) to pretend to be a mentally challenged athlete named Jeffy so he can enter the Special Olympics and come away the big winner. The movie may sound outrageous and offensive, but truthfully, navel-scratching slobs won't enjoy this any more than navel-gazing snobs once they catch a whiff of its overwhelming timidity. In the end, all that's left is a familiar tale about a guy who attempts to get close to a woman he likes (in this case, Katherine Heigl's perky volunteer) by pretending to be something he's not -- see City Lights, Tootsie, Hitch, and about 1,000 other titles that mine this formula better than The Ringer. H 1/2
RUMOR HAS IT... Scripter T.M. Griffin actually comes up with a clever premise: Sarah Huttinger (Jennifer Aniston) learns through a series of events that Charles Webb's best-selling novel The Graduate was based on the experiences of her own family -- specifically, the mother (now deceased) and grandmother (Shirley MacLaine) who more than 30 years earlier had slept with the same man (Kevin Costner). The hook turns out to be the most entertaining aspect of the film, as Sarah strives to learn exactly how all the pieces of the Graduate puzzle fit together. But once she becomes romantically entangled with Costner's character, the picture grinds to a halt, losing its comic conceit and getting bogged down in the mundanity of its older man-younger woman relationship. Director Rob Reiner then proceeds to make matters worse, repeatedly mistaking frantic for funny and basically turning these initially promising characters into gibbering idiots. HH
SYRIANA Syriana is intelligent agitprop, a stimulating fireball that deserves to be the center of water cooler conversation. If the movie has a fault, it's that it's too smart for its own good, assuming audiences are knowledgeable enough to grasp every historical reference, decipher every snatch of insider lingo and understand the intricate workings of American conglomerates. But better a film attempt to smarten up its viewers instead of dumbing them down. Writer-director Stephen Gaghan, who earned the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, again weaves together a head-spinning mix of people, places and incidents, though the end result isn't quite as fluid this time around. Among the characters are a CIA field operative (George Clooney), an energy analyst (Matt Damon) and a corporate lawyer (Jeffrey Wright); all figure in the connective narrative thread involving oil in the Middle East. This is a deeply pessimistic movie, which means it's the perfect film to represent the current malaise running unchecked through this nation of ours. HHH
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