On the 5th of September in 1972, the world was glued to their television screens, since it was the first live broadcast of the Olympic Games, which were taking place in Munich, and which was perhaps the most publicized games up until that point (there is an argument to be made for the previous time Germany had hosted the Olympiad, but that’s another discussion entirely), with an increased media presence and more spectators than ever, since so many more people can watch the games from their own homes. However, the festivities took a dark turn when rumours started to spread that gunshots were head in the Olympic village, which was the beginning of one of the most tense days in sports history after a group of Palestinian militants took several Israeli athletes and members of their delegation hostage, and made it very clear that they were not afraid to use violence. The presence of media intent on covering every moment of the games meant that these events were now shown around the world, becoming what is considered the first terrorist attack to be broadcast live, a grim fact that still lingers heavily over the discourse when it comes to looking at how the media portrays these events and how entire narratives can unfurl in real-time due to increased technological innovation. Over the past fifty years, there have been a number of works that have been made about these events, both fictionalised accounts and those that present them in a documentary format. The most recent attempt to look at this brief but unforgettable chapter in history is September 5, a film that is as bland and forthright as its title suggests. Focusing on the ABC News team that was stationed not far from the Olympic village, the film follows their attempts to cover the events, looking at their efforts to provide real-time updates to the audiences that watched anxiously around the world. Directed by Tim Fehlbaum (venturing into his first non-genre work after the well-received Tides and Hell), the film attempts to re-examine these events through a very different lens, but ultimately ends up being a rather uninspiring, overwrought affair that feels entirely unnecessary and perhaps slightly myopic in both its perspective and execution.

A big part of the marketing around September 5 is that it is aiming to be as apolitical as possible. The event commonly known as the Munich Massacre has been widely-discussed for over half a century, and the conversation inevitably veers towards favouring one side over the other, as is the case with any piece based around the Israeli-Palestine conflict, one of the most harrowing and lengthy cultural wars in recent memory, and one that continues to be extremely polarizing. In theory, a more objective view of these historical events sounds like a good approach – until we realize that no work of art can be entirely free of political context, and it is usually those that aim to remove its inherent prejudices that often turn out to be the most biased, since no artist worth our time is going to genuinely believe that they can create something that isn’t at least somewhat based on their opinion in some way or another. This is one of the fundamental flaws of this film, and one of the many reasons it feels so thoroughly misguided – absolutely no one requested yet another account of these events (especially since another more ambitious project from this year exists in the form of Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958 – 1989, which takes a more objective and accurate look at not only these events, but many others over the years that paint a more thorough portrait of the events), and to do so from the perspective of the media feels like a blatant attempt to shift the focus away from the actual issue and instead view it through the eyes of people who were marginally affected, but not nearly as much as the ones on the ground. There is a level of vilification of the police, military and other authority figures – we see how the journalists defy orders and openly rebel against the people sent to protect the public, simply because they felt compelled to be on the frontline. Films about the excellent work done by journalists are often quite good, but in the case of this film, they are portrayed as having delusions of grandeur and the desire to be the ones to deliver these events, which may be interesting to some, but feels generally quite dull and entirely uninspiring for several reasons.

However, the main issue with September 5 is not the choice of subject matter but rather how it is executed – this is a deeply misguided film based primarily on how it chooses to frame the events, which were objectively harrowing and difficult to witness, but which the director chooses to convey through a tense, real-time historical thriller, which was not at all the approach that should have been taken. Fehlbaum relies so much on genre tropes, he loses sight of the meaning behind this story, which is the needless loss of human lives and how the political atmosphere at the time led to such violence. It is possible to explore this subject matter without explicitly taking a side (even if the attempts to be apolitical are laughably misguided), but it’s insulting to do so in a manner that is this dull and one-dimensional, especially since it offers very little in terms of valuable commentary. The film only runs a measly 94 minutes, but it feels twice as long, primarily because of how it struggles to find the right pace – at some points, it moves at a rapid-fire, breakneck speed, while at others it feels laboriously slow, and in both instances it never manages to justify such an approach. It’s very lacklustre in execution, and never once manages to convince us of the merits of what it is saying, and ultimately just becomes a bland excursion into the past where the historical context is sacrificed in favour of cheap thrills, which are not even all that compelling to begin with. Fehlbaum has skill based on his prior films, but September 5 just feels like a bundle of bland, inconsequential details in which absolutely nothing of merit is said, and eventually just descends into an unconvincing bundle of ideas, absolutely none of which feel all that captivating. The subject matter is always delivered with the same tacky, heavy-handed techniques that we would expect – taking a very dark chapter in 20th century history and presenting it as this polished thriller that is shoehorned into the traditional three-act structure is a disservice to those involved in the original story, falling apart before it even begins to gain momentum and ultimately just being extremely lacklustre and extraordinarily boring in every conceivable way.

One would imagine that the cast would be enough to elevate the film or at least give it some nuance, but much like the writing, September 5 is extremely inconsistent when it comes to the performances, with nearly everyone involved doing absolutely nothing of value, and making us wonder what impelled them to deliver such uninteresting, dull performances. Designed as an ensemble piece, the film primarily does focus on the experiences of Geoffrey Mason, the executive in charge of the sports coverage, portrayed by John Magaro, who is steadily rising to become one of the most exciting young actors working right now, but who isn’t all that good in a role that required very little from him, and in which he delivered just as much. Peter Sarsgaard portrays yet another patrician journalist, this time as Roone Arledge, the supervisor in charge of the ABC News team, and who is the de facto voice of reason amidst all this panic. Much like Magaro, Sarsgaard is at his best when he is allowed to do something interesting, and this film (and this role in particular) doesn’t give him anything to do, outside of taking part in the several hurried scenes in which the characters witness these events unfolding. Leonie Benesch, Zinedine Soualem and Ben Chaplin round out the main cast, and are similarly lacking in any real impact, simply being cogs in this dreadfully trite machine that leave virtually no impression and seem to exist solely to deliver the overwrought dialogue, which Moritz Binder and Alex David write in conjunction with the director in one of the most heavy-handed screenplays from a major studio in recent memory. Attempting to be a character-based account of these events feels extremely misguided and contributes to much of the issues we can find with this film, which is quite simply an uninteresting endeavour in absolutely every way, and where the actors are not even able to salvage it, since they’re nothing more than plot devices used to further this already quite dismal story.

In most contexts, we’d imagine a film like September 5 would be able to be elevated with better direction, a stronger screenplay or more compelling performances – but unfortunately, the reality here is that this is just a film that is entirely unnecessary, telling a story that we’ve seen covered many times before (including in Steven Spielberg’s Munich, a far better film and one that actually feels like it has a point of view and the artistic integrity to support it), and which we simply didn’t need, especially since there’s nothing all that interesting about the perspective offered by this film, outside of contributing to the ongoing discourse around the political situation in the Middle East, which is never going to be resolved through such a flaccid attempt at apolitical commentary, which not only insults the viewer by assuming we can’t see it clear agenda, but also does an immense disservice to the actual historical figures, who certainly didn’t deserve this level of ineptitude and lacklustre storytelling. September 5 positions itself as the next great ode to journalists and the exceptional work they do, but not only does it not find anything valuable to say with already paltry material (since the film is essentially nothing more than a group full of people reacting to a hostage crisis), but it actively reworks the narrative to feel genuinely boring, losing all of its potential from the first moment when we are bombarded with the most overwrought writing imaginable, and introduced to characters that are extremely ambiguous and lacking in any discernible traits that make us want to spend the next ninety minutes with them. September 5 is an absolute misfire for so many reasons, and it is almost admirable how it manages to be both misguided in its approach to the subject and profoundly boring, almost to the point where we are actually impressed at this clear lack of skill or willingness to do anything more than the bare minimum.