Munich - The Edge of War Review

 

Munich - The Edge of War is a drama film, and based on the Robert Harris novel Munich. The movie is produced by Turbine Studios and distributed by Netflix. Munich - The Edge of War is written by Ben Power and directed by Christian Schwochow.

The story is it's 1938 and two former friends, one for Britain and the another working for the German government, are forced to become spies. Now they must do whatever they have to expose the secrets of the Nazis party before war breaks out.

Initial Reaction

The reason why I was interested in this is because I'm always looking forward to war dramas. That type of genre, if done right can give you a really good emotional story. So the fact we have two friends and different sides of the most historic war pitted against each other, it's a real interesting story.

Cons

One problem with the movie is I didn't really get a sense we were on the brink of war. They talk about how they're all getting close to this war, but you never have that feeling. There wasn't a scene, or scenes that made me go "Okay, this is the one that's made me feel war is coming".

Middle Ground

I've got nothing to say. Let's move on.

Pros

One positive I'll give the movie is the performances. So many people were spectacular. One example of a great performance is Ulrich Matthes as Adolf Hitler. With this performance he didn't have to shout or kill someone to make this performance work. What made it work was how he talked and how he could just stare at someone with an intent to scare you. What also worked was the pacing. Now I have heard some people have an issue, and they were reasonable. But for me I found the pacing to be very good. It kept going and it never felt like it slowed down way too much to the point where it felt like the film just stopped. Another pro with Munich was it keeps you on the edge of your seat. There's this one intense moment involving a gun. Throughout that whole sequence I had a feeling of being very nervous. Even if you know what's going to happen you still get this intense feeling. The last thing I'll give the film credit for is the different perspectives. Our main characters [Hugh and Paul] give us pretty vaild reasons of why they're doing the things they do. One wants to solve the conflict through a more peaceful means, while the other wants to do what he believes is the right thing, and can go on with life, hopefully with no regrets.

In all honesty, I enjoyed Munich - The Edge of War. It has great performances, pretty good pacing, keeps you on edge, and you're very interested on the different perspectives. My only complaint is we don't have that sense of war is going to break out.

My final rating is Good.

That's going to do it for me. Come back on Monday, Jan 24th for a brand new edition of Differences Between. For that one I'll be looking at the movie First Blood and the book it was based on.