September 5

My nephew and I finally had the opportunity to see September 5 last night and we both found it to be very compelling.  ABC Sports is covering the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich when members of the crew, including Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), the president of ABC Sports, Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), the head of operations, Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro), a producer, and Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch), a local translator, hear gunshots.  They soon learn that it is a terrorist attack by Black September in which Israeli athletes are taken hostage in order to extort the release of Palestinian prisoners.  Mason quickly decides to switch from coverage of volleyball and boxing to live coverage of the hostage situation as it unfolds in real time.  They face logistical problems with getting cameras and Peter Jennings (Benjamin Walker), then a reporter, on the scene but, because nothing like this had ever been done before, they also grapple with the morality of what they are doing because they may be impacting the fate of real people whose lives are in jeopardy in order to get a story.  Even though the outcome of this attack is widely known, it is still incredibly tense and suspenseful because of the frenetic pace created by hand-held camerawork and chaotic sound design that puts the audience right in the middle of the action.  The performances are also riveting and I was particularly impressed with Magaro because you feel the gravity of his decisions from just his facial expressions.  The production design is outstanding and the archival footage featuring Jim McKay's actual coverage blends seamlessly with scenes using the replicas of the studio and the control room.  I was really fascinated by the lack of modern technology as they create the broadcasts, especially when they take pictures of pictures in order to enlarge them and take pictures of letters on a board to create captions.  The focus is definitely on the implications for the media rather than the political and historical context of the attack itself and this might bother people but I found it very interesting and would recommend it.