September 5is a perfectly fine thriller, telling the story of the ABC team that broadcast the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage situation to over 900 million people around the world. It has both the feel of amade-for-TV movie(back when they were good) and a traditional “process” thriller, and it succeeds in both regards. Where it falters, though, is when it wrestles with the ideas at the core of the film, opting for an apolitical approach that rings hollow.
September 5
Cast
The 1972 Munich Olympics saw an American sports broadcasting crew unexpectedly tasked with covering a hostage situation involving Israeli athletes.
In a way, it feels like an apt metaphor for our times:September 5is more concerned with the images being put on the screen than what’s in them, eschewing a dive into the conflict at the center for a broader conversation about journalistic ethics and what kind of violence can be shown onscreen. It’s a topic that feels dated, especially when the way violence has been presented onscreen and the way we consume breaking news has evolved so much since 1972.
Videos of unspeakable brutality are just a click away and teenagers regularly play video games that are reductive and often problematic representations of very real conflicts. The origin of that may lie partly in what this ABC team presented to viewers — the Munich crisis was the first of its kind to be broadcast around the world, but the film fails to say anything new about this despite it being an otherwise engrossing effort.
September 5’s Problems Don’t Lie In Its Construction
It’s A Well Done Thriller, But At What Cost?
September 5begins in the early morning hours of the date in its title, beginning with the ABC crew hearing gunshots in the Olympic Village, mere feet away from their headquarters, up to the final update. The team is staffed with excellent performers — Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, and Ben Chaplin play a few of the main figures, but for my money, Leonie Benesch, who stars as Marianne, the lone German in the building, delivers the best performance.
The camera remains in tight close-up for much of the film, giving the newsroom a claustrophobic feel that makes the events feel all the more immediate. Director Tim Fehlbaum stages these scenes well, making sure that we don’t miss a beat at all times. I found myself getting swept up in the action more than a few times. Still, I was often thinking about what the film is missing rather than what it is presenting.
September 5tries to take an apolitical stance when it comes to the events at the Munich Olympics, but it forgets that being apolitical is a stance in and of itself.
September 5tries to take an apolitical stance when it comes to the events at the Munich Olympics, but it forgets that being apolitical is a stance in and of itself. It presents a multidimensional conflict in a one-dimensional way, sapping the hostage situation of any context that could tip its hand at an ideology. Sure, that may be the film’s point, but considering the ongoing genocide in Gaza and its direct connection to this event, it’s hard to watch this film without your own beliefs, which makes the absence of any point of view in the film more obvious.
September 5seems to want to exist in a bubble and has its strengths within that. But the themes it is concerned with pale in comparison to what it can say and chooses not to. Film is a medium in constant conversation with the world around it, so to ignore that in favor of a weaker thematic bent feels disingenuous. In depicting the horrific events of the Munich Olympics,September 5finds no real meaning that feels emotionally resonant.
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A bunch of sports reporters reacting to these events holds no weight when there are very real people who were deeply affected by the tragedies that came before and after this hostage crisis. It’s a riveting film, but one that left me feeling hollow and ultimately frustrated with the continued way in which much of American cinema tackles crises like the one at the center ofSeptember 5.
