"September 5"

  ☆☆☆☆½ 

On the first day of 2025, the day I saw the expertly crafted thriller September 5, two possible terrorist attacks took place, possibly committed by people possibly affiliated with known terror groups or possibly acting on their own but possibly collaborating with others for crimes that might or might not be terrorism.

Many media outlets reported as much as they knew as fast as they could, in a race for clicks, the 21st century version of giant headlines or Nielsen ratings. It's common parlance that we live in a "24 hour news cycle," and that "mainstream media" are often too hasty, too sensationalistic, too inaccurate. Famously, they've been branded "the enemy."

September 5 takes us back more than a half-century ago to a time when news might break at any hour, but people at newspapers and especially broadcast news actually went home for the evening. A group of broadcasters—the movie takes great pains to remind us that they were not journalists—from ABC Sports is creating one of the first truly international live broadcast events: the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics. Their entire operation is dedicated to making sure people a half a world away could watch the events unfold live.

When armed gunmen storm the Olympic Village, killing some members of the Israeli Olympic team and taking others hostage, this sports team has its boots on the ground. That fact forms the setup of September 5, an utterly absorbing and captivating movie that explores the machinations and ethical dilemmas of the group of producers and technicians as they beam the pictures and information live to the world.

It's a little surprising, in the best possible way, that a movie like September 5 even exists—much less that this German production, in English with an international team of performers, was picked up and distributed by Paramount Pictures. I can't remember the last time a major studio took what must now be perceived as a risk by presenting a movie filled with wall-to-wall dialogue, that expects a certain level of awareness and intelligence from its audience, and that never tries to pander with excess violence or unnecessary action.

Swiss director Tom Fehlbaum, who co-wrote the taut screenplay with Moritz Binder, has made a tense and claustrophobic thriller, a movie that is not as interested in the politics or background of the terror attacks themselves as in the outsized influence this one day had in the way media packages and we consume news. It's also a fascinating and authentic appreciation for technical craft of broadcasting—throughout September 5, producers and engineers and camera people and technicians need to use their brains to solve problems no one had ever seen before.

At the heart of it is a sports producer named Geoff Mason, who's played by John Magaro. Although Peter Sarsgaard, as Roone Arledge (who would parlay this moment into a career as one of the most influential news executives in TV history), is given top billing, it's Magaro whose anxious intensity and passionate commitment to his work holds the film together. Equally impressive is Leonie Benesch as a German translator who is thrust into a job she has no idea how to do. No one does, really, but they do it anyway, and September 5 is, despite its grim subject, a celebration of ingenuity and commitment.

It's certainly one of the best films of 2024, but it's important to emphasize that it's in no way meant to be an examination of the politics and causes behind the Munich massacre. While the film must delve into the specifics—often through the character of Peter Jennings, who was covering the Olympics, and was known as a geopolitical expert—and doesn't shy away from complexities, it's not about the gravity of the event on the world stage. It's about the way the moment changed media forever, and for anyone with the slightest interest in journalism and media and the way the world gets its information, it's not to be missed.

Viewed January 1, 2025 — AMC Century City

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