The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20250117165153/https://www.metacritic.com/movie/september-5/
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In Theaters Now
2024
R
Paramount Pictures
1 h 31 m
2024
R
Paramount Pictures
1 h 31 m
SummarySet during the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics, September 5 follows an American Sports broadcasting team that quickly adapted from sports reporting to live coverage of the Israeli athletes taken hostage. Through this lens, the film provides a fresh perspective on the live broadcast seen globally by an estimated one billion people at the time...
SummarySet during the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics, September 5 follows an American Sports broadcasting team that quickly adapted from sports reporting to live coverage of the Israeli athletes taken hostage. Through this lens, the film provides a fresh perspective on the live broadcast seen globally by an estimated one billion people at the time...
Even though events have been compressed to fit a 22-hour timeline into a 94-minute movie, and some conversations and characters are fictional, there’s never a moment when it feels as if events have been amped up or overcooked.
What it does present is a powerfully told, tightly wound, and riveting story of an American sports broadcasting team on a single day reporting on a major event in world history. It’s entirely apolitical in scope.
September 5 works most powerfully as a behind-closed-doors, single-room thriller, even as what we see on a wall of monitors is almost too unreal to believe.
September 5 recounts that tragic day with a combination of electricity and dread, drawing on strong performances for a meditation on the media’s responsibilities during such a volatile situation.
"September 5" is a brilliantly told suspenseful and well-acted movie exposes the ethical dilemmas in televising live kidnappings and murders but the self contained element of the story all from the newsroom and not showing any person from the perspective outside limits the strong narrative of the characters.
It’s invariably disappointing when a movie you’ve been looking forward to seeing doesn’t live up to expectations. But such is the case with the latest offering from writer-director Tim Fehlbaum. This re-creation of the day when Black September terrorists took members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage at the 1972 Munich Summer Games, sadly, misses the mark on many fronts. As told from the perspective of the ABC sportscasting crew covering the story, the film comes up short in conveying the sense of urgency and immediacy associated with this human tragedy, which was broadcast live around the globe and is said to have attracted more viewers than Neil Armstrong’s 1969 moon landing. While the picture is to be commended for its apparent authenticity and insights at capturing the events and mood inside the broadcast headquarters, much of the narrative nevertheless descends into a talky, overly technical take on what was transpiring around the TV crew, not a particularly effective way of depicting the nature of an event that shook the world and inevitably changed the way on which crisis situations are reported. While I certainly was not looking for sensationalist treatment here, I also wasn’t expecting to be bored by its clumsy, underwhelming chronicling of circumstances that had the globe on the edge of its seat. The depiction of this scenario, including the coverage of the particulars of that day, as well as examination of the myriad moral implications involved in their televised presentation, fail to captivate viewers on the same way as the events themselves did. I personally remember this fateful day quite well as one that became indelibly etched into the memory of an impressionable 15-year-old – and one that played a critical role in my eventual decision to pursue an education and career in journalism. Because of that, perhaps I expected too much from this release. Perhaps I had unrealistic hopes that an entertainment vehicle could live up to the compelling journalistic portrayal of an event such as this. Either way, though, that doesn’t make up for the disappointment associated with the telling of this story. In a world plagued by as many catastrophes as we experience these days, one could argue that we needn’t be reminded of those that are now behind us. But, if we choose to embrace the notion of “never forget” associated with such traumatic incidents, it behooves those behind such painful commemorations to make sure that their impact unmistakenly comes through, something that is definitely not the case with this offering.
