Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-

A comparison between September 5 and Civil War might not be immediately expected, except that these two movies have a very key thing in common: they are both about journalistic ethics. The key difference is that September 5 does it right, or at least focuses on it when it makes sense contextually to do so. Of course, there is also the fact that September 5 is actually based on a real event.

And that leads us into another question: whose perspective is the most worthy when telling a particular story? September 5 is about how the ABC sports news crew took ownership of the story when 12 people were taken hostage in a terrorist incident at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. President of ABC Sports Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) tells his crew that they need to come up with information about the hostages in order to make people care about them, but this movie about him never gives us more than a cursory glance at any of their backgrounds either.

This is arguably the point, from the point of view of director and co-writer Tim Fehlbaum. September 5 is also about how the media coverage of this incident changed broadcast news going forward. There’s a subtle implication that the news coverage itself actually made the incident worse. Maybe it was just that they were all treading new territory here when it came to news coverage, but in retrospect, it seems astonishing that it never occurred to them that the terrorists might have TVs turned on in the hotel rooms where they were keeping the hostages, seeing the very information they were broadcasting.

And then there is the idea of sharing news that may not be accurate due to a time constraint—or, in this case, the desire to have the scoop—without first getting two verified sources. This might secretly be the entire point of September 5, how news coverage has evolved since then, to become something fewer people than ever feel they can truly trust as accurate. Watching September 5, I thought a lot about how these news executives’ motives were based on exclusivity and ratings rather than the actual safety of anyone involved. Fehlbaum does not lean into this very heavily, but the thread is definitely there.

September 5 is expertly edited in a way that keeps you on the edge of your seat from start to finish, especially as soon as people suddenly hear gunfire in the distance. It’s fascinating, in a fairly depressing way, to consider the historical context of when this hostage crisis occurred: in 1972, it had only been 27 years since the end of World War II—plenty of people were still alive with vivid memories of the Holocaust, which happened in the very country where this incident took place. Unfortunately, in 2025 there are far too few people still around to heed the lessons of the second World War, but in 1972 it still felt to many like a very fresh wound.

Perhaps the most interesting character in September 5 is Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Beseech), a woman employed by ABC Sports as a German translator. There’s an exchange early in the film when a Frenchman who is part of the ABC Sports crew challenges her, asking if her parents are still around, and alluding to their complicity. “I’m not them,” Marianne retorts, and she proceeds to be an indispensable resource as the only person at ABC Sports who can listen to German police scanners or German news reports or even call local connections in Germany and tell all these Americans more concerned with covering the story what the hell is going on.

It’s impossible also not to think of the excellent 2005 Steven Spielberg film Munich, about the same incident but focusing on the moral implications of how Israel responded to it. Both that film and September 5 have a renewed relevance considering Israel’s current actions in Gaza, itself a disproportionate response to a much more recent terrorist attack. I’d rather like to see a telling of this story, say, from the hostages’ point of view. We keep getting different angles on this incident but none of them from the point of view of the victims.

That’s not to say the point of view in September 5 has no value—only that, perhaps, it obscures the incident’s most relevant perspectives. I’m unsure as to whether this was the primary intent, but for me, September 5 is an indictment of American exceptionalism and capitalism. A fair amount of time is given in this film to negotiations with CBS for live air time, and how a clever solution (by title writer Gladys Deist, played by Georgnia Rich) is in order to give in to CBS’s demand for airing their live feed, they put the ABC logo in the upper right-hand corner. Eleven people’s lives are at stake in this moment, and their primary concern is which network gets the credit for its coverage.

There’s a point at which Roone says to head of the control room Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro), “It may not feel like it, but you did a hell of a job today.” Mason replies, “It was a catastrophe.” This is actual history so it’s not a spoiler to say that all of the hostages were killed, so naturally by the time that happens the entire ABC Sports crew are devastated—especially after a regrettable reporting decision that I won’t spoil here.

The Munich massacre was a dark, watershed moment in world history, something ABC Sports had a minor hand in, simultaneously deliberate and unwitting. I feel uncertain as to how important that particular group’s story was to tell, but if nothing else, this film tells it incredibly well.

*Okay let’s all discuss the best way to tell this story.*

Overall: B+