The story of how the Palestinian militant group Black September carried out
a terrorist attack at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich has been told a
few times on the big screen. The two most notable being Steven Spielberg’s
Munich (2005) and Kevin Mc Donald’s documentary One Day in September
(1999).
Where Spielberg’s film focused mostly on the aftermath of the terror attack
and how the Israelis tracked down those responsible director Tim Fehlbaum
focuses on the actual events as seen through the eyes of American Sports
broadcasting team who, whilst filming the games for television, found
themselves slap bang in the middle of the biggest ever live news event.
September 5 follows Geoff (John Magaro), a young and ambitious producer his
boss,, legendary TV executive Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), and their
German interpreter Marianne (Leonie Benesch) as they try and cover the fast
evolving incident.
The cast are all terrific. The story, as you would expect, has plenty of
drama however if you’re familiar with the story, or the aforementioned
films, September 5 really doesn’t bring anything new to the table other
than seeing it from a different perspective. September 5 entertaining
enough film (if you can call a film about a terrorist attack entertaining).
It’s functional and tells its story well but in the end it just lacks that
spark that would have made it truly memorable.
