Munich was a worrying film. Steven Spielberg is a great director, to be sure, but his recent efforts – everything from War of the Worlds to Artificial Intelligence: AI – have been lacking. Spielberg’s true opuses were made in the seventies and eighties. Since then, the emphasis seems to have turned more and more to big budget special effects and name recognition (both his and the stars he regularly employs) rather than expert, engrossing storytelling.

But even more worrying going into it was the subject matter of Munich. The film follows a group of five Israeli Mossad agents, assigned to exact revenge for the killing of 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 summer Olympics in Munich. Those responsible? A militant Palestinian group named Black September. It’s timely, whether because of terrorism broadly, or the fractured Israeli-Palestinian peace process specifically, and that is what makes it such dangerous subject matter.

On the one hand, Spielberg ran the risk of dehumanizing the Palestinians, neglecting to show anything but the brutality of the murderers. And he could have just as easily swung the other way, painting Israel with a thick brush. To his credit, he does neither. In an interview with TIME magazine, in response to a scene in which a Palestinian argues the justness of his cause with lead character Avner (Eric Bana), Spielberg said that without that scene, he “would have been making a Charles Bronson movie – good guys vs. bad guys and Jews killing Arabs without any context. And I was never going to make that picture.”

And he didn’t. While a few scenes such as that one come off a bit heavy-handed, Munich does avoid that first hurdle, of being overly sensational or one-sided. With that fear allayed, how does Munich rate as a film? In a word, sublime. The cinematography works very well with the mood and pace. While the film does weigh in at a hefty two hours, 44 minutes, it doesn’t seem unduly slow. The shots are closely cropped, giving a sort of urgency during the action sequences. And there is action. Disregarding the historical subtext and all of the other human conflicts, Munich has enough explosions and gunplay for anyone interested.

One of the things really going for the film, is that Spielberg does not go with the high profile stars. The two Toms (Hank and Cruise) that Spielberg often use are nowhere to be seen, and this allows the viewer to become more engrossed in the film (provided none of the actors are immediately memorable from another earlier role – unlikely). Eric Bana plays Avner, the leader of the five person squad chosen to take down the organizers of the Munich killings. Bana works the part magnificently; the mission takes a visible toll on his character. There is a visible character arc for Avner and the others on his team. But none of the roles are especially memorable, and none need be. The actors do their jobs admirably, so you’re left believing that they’re characters, and not actors grandstanding in the hopes of award show glory.

Ultimately, Munich is a well crafted, big-budget (rumored to have topped the $70 million mark) Hollywood flick. The operative phrase here being well crafted. The film avoids most of the pitfalls that Spielberg routinely falls into: sentimentality, ham-fisted dialog, being overly dogmatic – or even simply too safe and “happy.” Spielberg took risks, and it paid off. While it might not be groundbreaking, Munich is still an exciting film that’s worth the price of admission, and by most accounts ranks among Spielberg’s better work.