September 5

This movie, about an event from over fifty years ago, lands at a particularly interesting time.

I'm not talking about how its wide release overlaps with the United States' inauguration of a wannabe authoritarian, although its setting in a Germany still showing fresh scars carved by entrusting their government to a strongman cannot go unnoticed. But more directly, it centers on a Palestinian terrorist group (Black September) taking the Israeli Olympic team hostage, which cannot help but call to mind the ongoing Israel–Hamas war, while also highlighting the long, violent history which precedes it. Although notably, the movie isn't too interested in digging into the nuances of the politics, only just enough for the crew to barely comprehend what they're witnessing. This is likely a relic of shooting taking place in early 2023, long before the Hamas attack on October 7 of that year. And yet, it enters into a fraught political moment when international watchdogs are labeling Israel's actions genocide and American politicians are quick to label such critiques antisemitic.

Instead, its focus is on the role and the impact of the media, which is itself a culture war issue with potentially grave implications for our democracy. Director Tim Fehlbaum does an excellent job showing a wide variety of different concerns which come together to shape their coverage. On the team, you've got Germans anxious about how the Games and attack impact perception of their country, Jewish-Americans uncomfortable being mere miles from a concentration camp, engineers who just care about getting the shot, and reporters with a pathological need to be as close to the action as possible. At the top and on site is Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), the president of ABC Sports, who manages to paying lip service to such concerns while being clearly driven by ratings.

At the center of the maelstrom is Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro), the relatively green head of the control room, directing the coverage and coordinating information gathering. In contrast to Roone's easy yet unwavering confidence, he's on edge, wanting desperately to make a good impression. He quickly demonstrates his preparedness for the day, although all his knowledge of the scheduled sporting events quickly proves to be useless when they hear shots ring out a few hundred yards away in the Olympic Village.

Despite being shown in the trailer, the moment is even more striking in context. Up to that point, the only "score" to speak of was the rhythmic sounds of the broadcast crew toiling away, operating their stations and calling out camera directions and resolving technical issues. But just as the first shots echo across the hill just outside the studio, as Marianne (Leonie Benesch), Jacques (Zinedine Soualem), and Hermann (Ferdinand Dörfler) smoke by the slightly open door, a faint droning begins. It's almost too quiet to hear, only noticeable if you're looking for it, but unmistakable when you notice it. The volume slowly climbs as the crew looks confused and concerned, and then the rat-a-tat-tat comes again. By the time the title drop lands at the close of the scene, it's no longer hiding, preparing us for what's certain to be a harrowing ninety minutes.

To ensure that is the case, Fehlbaum makes the smart decision to keep us with the ABC broadcast crew the whole time. Which mostly means we stay in the building, with a few key exceptions as crew members leave to get another angle on the action, each one doing more to codify the chaos and uncertainty enveloping the situation than clarify it. As such, if this is your first exposure to the events of the Munich massacre, you'll be thrown into the same level of confusion felt by the characters, a huge boon to a movie ultimately angling to be a thriller.

However, that angle is part of the problem. Despite setting up a few interesting conversation points, such whether media coverage ever truly be altruistic and if its presence alters the events it's covering, it doesn't do much to explore those ideas. It calls into question the motives of those deciding what viewers see, but doesn't discuss how that shapes the perception of the world's events. It displays the impact that a language barrier and miscommunication and concern over public perceptions can have on what's reported, but we don't get to sit with that long enough to reckon with it. The movie raises a bunch of questions, but it doesn't have anything new or insightful to say about them, so it just leaves them hanging in the air rather than sharpening them to a fine point.

Having said that, I must acknowledge it's not an entirely fair characterization. It ignores a core theme of the film which the script never goes out of its way to highlight, but is undeniably present: the danger inherent in trusting an incredibly important operation to a bunch of people prepared for the wrong job. A parallel is drawn between the Bavarian State Police, who are out of their depth from the very beginning of the tragedy, and the broadcast crew, an ABC Sports department which refused to cede coverage to News due to their proximity to the event. Neither is ready for the days' events, nor has an experience-based understanding of how to proceed. So they move forward the same way they always have, improvising as they go, and cause themselves and the hostages all sorts of problems as a result.

We get a front row seat to it on the broadcast side. Roone's obsessed with the ratings opportunity, there are accusations their coverage may have aided the terrorists, and we're immediately exposed to the biases and even racism of the crew towards the Palestinians, which manifests in their complete neglect to dig into the why of the event. Some of that is lack of expertise: they have to turn to reporter Peter Jennings (Benjamin Walker) to even guess at who might be responsible for the attack before the official announcement. But they're so used to simply capturing and amplifying the emotion of the moment, it doesn't occur to them to go any deeper. Little of which is directly commented upon, yet it still impresses in your mind.

This is a messy film, and the timing of its release is not ideal. The news flowing from Gaza is sure to color how audiences receive its disinterest in the politics of the conflict, especially since people will understandably assume the filmmakers deliberately avoided commenting on the current moment, rather than already being deep into post-production. But push past that, and what you have is an engaging thriller with wonderful performances that has a few things on its mind, even as it's not able to articulate them quite as well as it would like.