Steven Spielberg has discovered a damning parable about America's post-9/11 strategy. He just hasn't turned it into a good movie.

In 1972 Israel sent a hit squad after the Palestinians responsible for the fiendish guerrilla attack at the Munich Olympic games—a high-profile attack that, much like 9/11, brought the reality of terrorism and the fiery politics of the Middle East into popular culture. Israel's eye-for-an-eye reaction to Munich marked the beginning of a tragic, spiraling strategy of vengeance.

This bloody film drills home the point that violence begets violence, from the initial shots of TV viewers mesmerized by the terror attack, to the retaliatory Israeli bombs that shatter entire floors of hotels, to the PLO's follow-up letter-bombing campaign. Thanks to Spielberg's trademark subtlety, the film ends with a shot of the Twin Towers.

Munich follows lead Israeli assassin Avner Kauffmann (Eric Bana) through the cloak-and-dagger underworld of counterintelligence and the bourgeois neighborhoods of Europe (where most of the ex-pat Palestinian plotters live) as he knocks off targets and becomes increasingly alienated. After an inadvertent conversation with one of his Palestinian counterparts begins to resonate, he starts refusing to cooperate with his superiors; plans ever sloppier missions; slips into catatonic dementia while trying to make love with his wife (really stupid scene); and finally abandons Israel altogether, moving to America. The film is heavy-handed, tedious, and—I gotta say—shockingly sexist. Women only exist in this movie to provide earthy symbols of home or as sympathetic props meant to increase our revulsion to the violence.

Munich also relies on telegraphed speechifying instead of storytelling ("But every time we kill one, we create six more"); clunky juxtapositions (did I mention the Twin Towers?); schmaltzy themes (home, faith, children); and cheap shorthand character studies (Avner is an amateur chef, and one of his marks, a refined Palestinian intellectual, bickers with his wife just like they're an adorable old Jewish couple).

Spielberg never turns his compelling Munich comparison into anything more than a barstool analogy. That's too bad. It's a rich and promising premise. But despite Spielberg's Hollywood expertise—Avner's baby daughter will pull at your heartstrings and the espionage set pieces will make your pulse pound—he's made a shallow and disappointing film.