Retrospective coverage of the events that unfolded in the 1972 Summer Olympics have been covered by Steven Spielberg (2005’s Munich), touched upon in a Steve Prefontaine biopic starring Jared Leto, and voiced over by Michael Douglas in an award-winning documentary (One Day in September). When we approach September 5, the latest revisit of the historical event, it examines the muscles, sweat, and nerve-firing involved in the live coverage of the attack as it unfolded.

John Magaro, who plays Geoff Mason, clocks into his graveyard shift for the US sports coverage of the Munich Olympics. As he shuffles in, ABC day-shift leads Roone Arledge (Peter Saarsgard) and Marvin Beder (Ben Chaplin) head “home” — Roone to attend to his daughters over the phone, Marvin to take a power nap in a utility closet. Anyone familiar with the second or third shifts in any career field knows that this time period generally deals with the minor league issues. Unfortunately, on this shift where a couple of crew members hear gunshots outside the building, there is little preparation in the emergency manual to know how to respond to a hostage situation at the Olympic Village.

It should be mentioned that September 5 is intended to be largely apolitical, which works in tandem with the sports broadcasting team trying to figure out how the heck they’re going to cover this event (and yet, they have the energy to adamantly fight off the news team from taking over even if they are more equipped to know when to use the word “terrorism”). The timing of the film is sorta…interesting, and while there are a couple of mentions about Palestine (spoiler: not very in-depth), it’s important to note that the film, in a fat-free 90 minutes, is not a great source of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead, for whatever reason, the film indulges its tense moments in sexism and inter-European prejudices (there is a German-born employee, played by Leonie Benesch, who has to bear the brunt of both issues, which…I don’t know, is supposed to demarcate the Old Days?).

But by the end of the film, I felt like my endorphins just completed a F1 circuit. The movie is simplified enough to follow, but it excels so much in production and performance, particularly Magaro’s own Olympian achievement in prop multitasking. In one climactic scene, Geoff juggles between a chunky phone receiver, a brick-sized radio speaker, and headphones with ear cushions befitting for airplane mechanics to receive confirmation news of the hostages’ condition. This is the life of the ‘70s, but the cast never gives in to the technological regression of weight, response time, and general limitations that we know today. I’d clunkily describe it as the opposite feeling of seeing “email faces” in period pieces.

In addition to its physicality, the momentum of stress is tantamount to September 5’s enjoyability. Even when our blood is rushing, the film can still keep it going by how slow things were: dialing with a rotary phone, having a runner surreptitiously bring film reels in and out of the Village, and fighting over the “bird” (on-air programming slots) with other networks. The characters sometimes buck underneath the pressure, feeling like stock dialogue. Arledge’s pursuit of broadcast greatness clashing again Beder’s natural hesitation to show murders on screen feel like the film’s supposed need to have internal strife. The little details in between, such as Geoff’s stature seeming to tower in the control room and shrink in the hallway, might be worth enough for a second run.

But then again, what do we gain from another rehash of the event, depicting the same national perspective? I applaud the exercise, but I’m not sure if the emotional rollercoaster, especially one that is less worried about nuance, garners another lap.

September 5
2024
dir. Tim Felhbaum
95 min.

Now available on premium VOD