Tonight's Movie: September 5 (2024)

SEPTEMBER 5 (2024) tells the story of the Israeli hostage crisis at the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics, as experienced from inside the ABC Sports control room.

I was intrigued by the trailer when I saw it some months ago, and when I read yesterday's Hollywood Reporter obituary of Geoffrey Mason (played by John Magaro in the film), it seemed like a good time to pull out the DVD I'd picked up and watch it.

I was quite young when the events in the film took place, and I think my parents must have shielded me from it at the time; while I remember Mark Spitz and Olga Korbut quite well, I don't remember watching coverage of the hostage situation.

I found the movie very creative in its approach; with the exception of a few brief moments, the film's entire 95-minute running time is set in the control room. Moritz Binder, Tim Fehlbaum, and Alex David were nominated for Best Original Screenplay, and I think it was deserved.

Young director Geoffrey Mason (Magaro), along with ABC executive Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) and the head of Olympics coverage, Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), make a series of challenging decisions as the terrorist attack unfolds. They refuse to hand over coverage to ABC News, half a world away, and they also must wrestle with how much they should broadcast live, given that anything could happen.

Ethical questions are a key aspect explored in the film, with the crew ultimately leaning hard into showing as much as they could, despite risks regarding what might be seen in a live broadcast. This led to a problem when it was suddenly realized that TVs in the Olympic Village were able to play the broadcast meant for U.S. audiences -- and thus the terrorists could see the positioning of the police.

One of the film's creative choices which I found most intriguing was that those in the control room give anchor Jim McKay directions, but we never actually see beyond the control room into the broadcast booth; we only see monitors, playing actual clips from McKay's original live coverage.

Likewise, Howard Cosell is briefly heard in archival footage.

Peter Jennings, on the other hand, appears as an onscreen character; he's played by Benjamin Walker, who captures Jennings as knowledgeable and willing to take chances, venturing into the Olympic Village during the crisis, but he's also a bit of a haughty sourpuss. It works.

I found some of the recreated technical aspects fascinating, such as Gladys Deist (Georgina Rich) creating news captions by hand and placing the ABC logo on the camera manually. Glimpses of "the way things used to be" before the computer era were quite interesting.

The crew shows ingenuity in other ways, such as sneaking film into the Olympic Village with a crew member who pretends to be an athlete and lugging a huge camera outdoors to focus on the apartment where the hostage situation was taking place. A German translator (Leonie Benesch) uses walkie-talkies to provide key intel from various sources which ABC's English-speaking employees can't understand.

It's a fast-paced, well-edited film with excellent performances, particularly by Sarsgaard and Chaplin. Sometimes movies which recreate historical events feel phony, particularly when it comes to the actors, or it often easy to spot anachronisms which take you out of the story. I had no such issues with SEPTEMBER 5. It's a gripping, fresh look at a sad day in history, and I recommend it.

The movie was directed by cowriter Tim Fehlbaum. It was filmed by Markus Forderer.

SEPTEMBER 5 is also available on Blu-ray.

Tweet