September 5

I've been having some back pain recently. This was why my January wasn't as productive as I wanted it to be. In particular, this is why I skipped out on September 5 when it played theatrically last month. Well, now that my back is mostly healed, I'm finally able to check it out for myself on MGM +. Let's go.

It's September 5th, 1972, and the Summer Olympics are underway in Munich. Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), president of ABC Sports, ends a seemingly ordinary night shift. As producer Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) takes over, the crew seemingly hear gunshots coming from the nearby Olympic Village. They soon get word that the terrorist group, Black September, has taken the Israeli Olympic Team hostage, and have already killed two of their members. Arledge gets back to work, while Mason gets his crew ready to cover the crisis. But will their efforts make things worse?

Unlike Steven Spielberg's Munich, which depicted the attack in its opening, the Oscar-nominated screenplay co-written by director Tim Fehlbaum keeps it all off-screen. We're kept inside ABC headquarters as the situation develops only a few blocks away. Among their issues, Mason and his crew struggle for pivotal satellite privileges, sneak crewmember Gary Slaughter (Daniel Adesoun) into the Olympic Village and scramble to get the ever-changing word out. Its opening moments show them cover swimmer Mark Spitz's victory on the last normal day of the Games. It's all pretty fascinating to watch in case you want to know how a TV newsroom works. 

What glimpses we get of the crisis, from the gunshots to the televised masked man on the balcony, are sufficiently ominous. While Mason and Alredge see a major news story, operations manager Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin) sees a developing tragedy. Their differences are exemplified when they argue over the prospect of showing live violence. Later on, the crew realizes that if practically everyone is watching their coverage, then so are the militants. This gets them visited by understandably angry German police almost immediately. None of these scenes are as tense as the finale, when the crew inadvertently report the exact wrong news. The dramatic irony of the moment is immense, as is Mason's ensuing emotional devastation.

What else do we have here? Bader has a decent rapport with the crew's translator, Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch). Their early conversation over the state of post-war Germany is quite memorable. Jim McKay, who famously anchored the coverage, mostly appears in stock footage along with future anchor Peter Jennings. Outside of it, McKay is played by stand-in Matthias Schum, while Jennings is played by Benjamin Walker. The editing by Hansjörg Weißbrich helps makes the switches seamless. For some reason, I didn't notice Lorenz Dangel's score until the start of the crisis. It's an unusual mistake, and quite perplexing, given that his opening track in the control room is nice and exciting. The rest of the score is perfectly tense.

I saw Munich years ago, but I vividly remember McKay's declaration of the outcome: "They're all gone." That memory was still fresh as I saw September 5's perspective of that day in 1972. What will especially stick with me this time is the coda, in which Mason walks out the building alone, sobered by the day's events. The epilogue, which tells us the coverage got more viewers than Apollo 11, helps us think about the price of sensationalism. 

Both this film and Munich might make for an interesting double feature. But I'll leave it to you to watch one, the other or something a lot more light-hearted. As for me, I got to get ready for I have something mentally challenging to do: this year's Oscar-nominated Documentary Shorts. That review's coming up soon.