You might think that in the wake of Kevin Macdonald’s documentary “One Day in September” (1999) and Steven Spielberg’s “Munich” (2005), filmmakers might have nothing left of interest to say about the terrorist attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics that left 11 Israeli athletes and coaches dead, said Matthew Bond in The Mail on Sunday. “But you’d be wrong.”
“September 5”, which has deservedly picked up an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay, revisits that day, but describes it from the standpoint of the ABC journalists and production crew who covered the events as they unfolded. The result is a “brilliantly edited and all too timely thriller” featuring “standout performances” from the likes of John Magaro, as the inexperienced producer in charge of the control room, and Leonie Benesch, as the production assistant who turns out to be the only German speaker present. Peter Sarsgaard also “adds heft” as a TV veteran wrestling with the ethics of covering a terrorist siege live on television. It adds up to a “serious, sombre, intelligent drama”.
“Brisk, jittery and predominantly filmed with hand-held cameras”, this “gripping” film “deftly cuts between the nervy dramatised events behind the scenes and actual archive footage from ABC’s coverage” of the day, said Wendy Ide in The Observer. “So tautly directed that you can practically feel the panic-sweat trickling down the back of your own neck”, this is “nail-chewing, edge-of-the-seat stuff”.
“The film is clenched and claustrophobic”, said Tim Robey in The Telegraph, and with its 95-minute running time, “it certainly doesn’t dawdle”. But it swerves the bigger questions it raises, and in the end I found it a bit “workmanlike”, with the “feel of a hand-wringing teleplay”.