September 5 movie review: Suspenseful 1972 Munich Olympics terror attack drama

By now, we’re familiar – too familiar – with images of terror attacks. The frenzied camera movements, the chaos of the scene, the fear on civilian faces.

We’re glued to live, rolling coverage as news crews try to capture the horrors.

It wasn’t a thing before the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage crisis. When eight masked, black-clad men broke into the apartment of Israeli athletes and coaches at 4am on September 5, 1972, there was a TV broadcast crew not far from where it happened.

As guns were fired, an American sports broadcasting team were gearing up for the day’s expected action, which was supposed to happen on fields, not in the athletes’ village where terrorists were holding hostages in demand for the release of Palestinian prisoners.

September 5 is the dramatisation of that event, not from inside the apartment or the fates of the terrorists or hostages, but from the perspective of the news crew who found themselves in a situation they never expected.

Most of them weren’t war correspondents or political reporters, they were sports journalists, and that scramble makes for compelling storytelling. Through their experience, September 5 captures not just a moment which changed Olympics or world history, but heralded the spectacle of live news coverage.

Directed by Swiss filmmaker Tim Fehlbaum, September 5 is a tight and suspenseful drama that keeps you at the edge of your seat. Every beat, every moment, every scene is carefully calibrated to hold your attention, even when it seems like not much is happening except for people talking.

The stakes are high — live coverage of the police operation outside the Israeli apartment tips off the terrorists and the reporting of unsourced and unverified information could have calamitous effects. It is literally life or death.

The claustrophobia of so much time spent in the control room heightens the tension, elevated by the film’s disciplined, rhythmic editing which dials up the dynamism while always ensuring a clear throughline.

It’s a great reminder that “action” can just be dialogue and stressed out expressions, it doesn’t have to be car chases or explosions to have the same gut-churning effect.

The heart of the team is Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro), the head of the control room who’s only just stepped into the role.

He’s trying to coordinate all the coverage including sneaking in reporter Peter Jennings (Benjamin Walker) into the village, camouflaging a crew member as an American athlete to get film canisters in and out after cops lock down the perimeter and sending out the only German speaker, Marianne (Leonie Benesch), to follow everyone to the airfield.

Magaro, who started his career as an uncredited extra in Munich, the Steven Spielberg actioner about the fallout of the 1972 hostage crisis, is really having a moment.

He’s been working consistently for almost two decades and has some memorable performances including in Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow and recurring spot on Orange is the New Black, but the past year has been a break-out era.

Between September 5, Past Lives and a supporting role in The Agency, Magaro has landed himself on the one-to-watch list. Here, he easily carries the weight of the lead as a character who’s commanding but not overbearing, and someone who is genuinely good at his job, trying to do his best in a bizarre situation.

The release of September 5 might be coming out at what seems like a crucial moment with the current conflict in the Middle East but this is a film that speaks to any moment of the past five decades.

Much more than an Israel-Palestine conflict film, it is a media story. You can draw a line from the questions posed in that control room to the quandaries that plague us now.

Rating: 4/5

September 5 is in cinemas