Writer/director Tim Fehlbaum (who co-wrote this film with Moritz Binder and Alex David) opens September 5 on an instantly worrisome note. As protagonist Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) gets into his car and drives to work at his ABC news station outpost, he turns on the radio. What tune should come through the airwaves but "Fortunate Son" by Credence Clearwater Revival? With all due respect to CCR and its fans (the band produced several bangers and I absolutely adore Hard Target's closing credit use of "Down on the Bayou"), there couldn't be a more trite song to establish a 1970s period piece. It's become the poster boy for overused movie needle drops for a reason.
Unfortunately, September 5 subsequently unspools in a fashion as familiar as that needle drop. Solid performances and craftsmanship seep into the proceedings, but they can’t eradicate the overly familiar elements weighing down Fehlbaum’s movie.
September 5 chronicles the 1972 Munich Olympic hostage crisis from an unorthodox perspective. Fehlbaum begins with ABC Sports personnel like Mason arriving at a Munich broadcast station outpost near the Olympic Village. Things are moving so slowly that the operation's leader, Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) announces he's taking a 20-minute nap. "I promised my daughters," he remarks regarding his insistence on rest. However, nobody is getting any shut-eye any time soon. The ominous sound of gunshots is followed quickly by news that the Israeli Olympic team is being held hostage in their Olympic Village rooms by soldiers from the Palestinian military organization Black September.
Previously, the Munich Olympics were all about emphasizing how Germany had put the terrifying past of the Holocaust into yesteryear. Now, more horrific headlines connected to this country are popping up all over the world. Arledge and Mason quickly realize that they’ve got the best proximity to cover this story for American TV viewers. Previously, their specialty had been volleyball coverage, not announcing breaking news stories. History has called upon them, though, to chronicle what’s transpiring. It's all hands on deck, including for German-native employee Marianne Gebhardt (Leoni Benesch), to ensure this ramshackle news team provides live coverage of a news story gripping the world.
Sometimes, what you come up with on the spot is better than anything you can write. Throughout September 5, various televisions display pieces of actual archival footage of the hostage crisis as it transpired. These include a police chief talking to the leader of the Black September soldier or gun-toting German police officers trying to sneak into that fateful apartment. For my money, the most affecting of these pieces of footage is news anchor Jim McKay providing gob-smacked commentary on the events happening around him. "This seems like the unreal world," he hauntingly notes at one point watching a sniper on an Olympic Village roof. His famous "our worst fears have been realized tonight" announcement also gets screentime.
McKay’s off-the-cuff observations authentically render what it’s like to witness history in the making. Polished poeticism goes out the window. Brutally succinct exclamations of fear and uncertainty take their place. September 5’s newly created footage, though, opts for very obvious tidy dialogue. The archival footage exudes chaos, but Fehlbaum creates a movie that's often too cozy for its own good. This is best exemplified by the eye-roll-worthy displays of intolerance creeping into the ABC Sports station. For instance, one member of the team barks a misogynistic statement to Gebhardt ("Get us some coffee, will ya sweetheart?"). He then gets a big "oh, shucks" moment realizing, only when she's left the room, that Gebhardt wields technological know-how he lacks.
Later, she finishes his task while he retrieves HER a beverage. It’s a weirdly disconnected moment also suggesting Gebhardt’s misogyny struggles are confined to one person. It's the opposite of something thoughtful like Aattam, which brilliantly depicts how misogyny can come from anywhere. Similarly, the film's sole prominent Arab character, Jacques Lesgards (Zinedine Soualem), hears someone responding to the hostage crisis by bitterly espousing a racist remark. "Hey, watch it, my mother's Algerian!" Lesgard's remarks before the concept of anti-Arabic sentiments are dropped altogether. Gebhardt and Lesgards should not be defined solely by their marginalized identities nor through their relationships with white male characters. However, these two are barely fleshed-out individuals whose most notable September 5 scenes are deeply clumsy probing of prejudice. They should've had way more to do.
The after-school special style of handling misogyny and anti-Arabic sentiments speaks to the unfortunate shallowness seeping into September 5’s characters. Despite being stuck in a newsroom with these people for 96 minutes, minimal distinctive personality traits emerge from these scrambling journalists. Supposedly key characters like Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin) inexplicably vanish for lengthy portions of the runtime, while the deeply talented Sarsgaard has nothing to do with his role. Rather than coming alive as absorbing figures, September 5’s various players are largely around to say lines (“It’ll be a quiet day!”) that history will soon render ironic.
Combine that with a routine linear narrative structure and September 5’s script offers no surprises. Past motion pictures covering this same historical event, like Munich, were much more distinctively crafted cinematic experiences. Why not just stay home and watch those instead? Even as a lifetime member of the John Magaro fan club, September 5 doesn’t offer enough screenwriting innovations to establish a firm idiosyncratic identity.
Visually, September 5 registers as a more interesting creation. Markus Förderer's cinematography intentionally immerses Mason and his crew in a dimly lit space. Overhead lighting is nonexistent in a place where nothing can obscure the nearby monitors. This effectively contrasts with the bright daytime outside and the vividly lit soundstage McKay reports on. Only an army of small TV screens illuminate this button-filled room, which often reflects the darkness everyone is in regarding what’s going on with this hostage crisis. Props to Fehlbaum and Förderer in exuding discernible darkness on September 5's newsroom sequences without rendering things incoherent.
Hansjörg Weißbrich's editing is also solid, particularly whenever he cuts from various parts of how the news piece sausage gets made. The dynamic rhythms of going from buttons getting pushed to a woman organizing letters on a blackboard (which will be turned into on-screen news report text) to people getting photos ready in a red room provide some propulsive thrills. Unfortunately, these superior visual impulses are undercut by Lorenz Dangel's generic score. September 5’s ambitions are clearly to provide a gripping political thriller that grows increasingly devastating. That requires a sonic landscape full of ominousness and activeness. The score should feel like running music for when the world is collapsing around you.
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, among other composers, could’ve cranked out some great compositions in that mold. Dangel’s score, meanwhile, never registers much of a personality. It opts for music cues and instrumental choices that could’ve come from any genre or film. It’s another aspect of September 5 too derivative to leave an impact. Even with some solid visual chops, this historical drama is too fixated on generic characters and storytelling impulses to serve its stacked* ensemble cast. That early “Fortunate Son” needle drop was an ominous harbinger of the incoming movie. Some are really praising September 5 right now, but to paraphrase Credence Clearwater Revival, “That ain’t me, that ain’t me.”
* Leonie Benesch, by the way, is a tremendous performer who absolutely crushed it in one of 2023's best movies, The Teachers' Lounge. stay home and catch up on that, It's a much better use of her endless gifts.