By what circuitous aesthetic strategy is Slate‘s David Edelstein’s claiming that Munich “is the most potent, the most vital, the best movie of the year“? It’s not that I disagree as much as Edelstein has made a decision to climb out to the tip of the the mainmast for the sake of climbing out to the tip of the mainmast. And yet there’s a graph halfway through his review that’s quite persuasive: “Is Munich an apology for Palestinian terrorists — for men and women who barbarously murder civilians? I don’t consider a movie that assigns motives more complicated than pure evil to constitute an apology. The Israeli government and many conservative and pro-Israeli commentators have lambasted the film for naivete, for implying that governments should never retaliate. But an expression of uncertainty and disgust is not the same as one of outright denunciation. What Munich does say — and what I find irrefutable — is that this shortsighted tit-for-tat can produce a kind of insanity, both individual and collective.” Right, right…but there’s still the way the second half of this self-important, heavy-handed thing is paced and over-states and makes you check your glow-in-the-dark watch every 15 or 20 minutes. Face it…that’s the nub of it.