September 5 Review

From a Bygone Era (derogatory)

Tim Fehlbaum's September 5 is a retelling of the 1972 Munich Olympic Hostage Crisis from the perspective of the ABC newsroom, which had the potential to be a significant film about the transformation of crisis media coverage. However, it falls short in many aspects. It attempts to be a tense hostage thriller like Dog Day Afternoon but lacks the charm and intensity. It also tries to be an investigative journalist procedural like Spotlight, but it lacks the heart and exploration of the integrity of accurate reporting. The film's failure to delve into the ethical dilemmas and challenges of crisis journalism is a significant missed opportunity. It also aims to be Network and examine the power of media and its influence on the masses, but it never accomplishes its goals. It fundamentally fails at every level at which it aims. The film's political framing is either willfully ignorant or wholly cynical. To completely one side a conflict and dehumanize the other, or at least be intellectually disinterested in the conflict's origins, is creatively and morally bankrupt. To say this film will age like milk might be too nice; it's come out curdled from the start, leaving us with lost potential.

I do not intend to give the film the respect of a full review as it's unwilling to meaningfully engage with its subject matter, so let's make some rapid-fire points. The politics aside, the film lacks any dynamic direction or visual style. For instance, the use of grainy film to evoke the 70s era feels forced and unoriginal. I saw two movies this past week, The Apprentice and Saturday Night, that immersed me into the visual feel of the 70s way better. It felt just lazy. The film fails to develop any characters, creating a significant disconnect between the audience and the performer. Even though the performances were sometimes outstanding, you gave me no reason to care about the characters themselves. All the film's stakes take place in other rooms or places we can't see, and we are never given the magnitude around the world of how big of a deal this situation was. Was the budget spent entirely on the broadcast room? Like, I am all for one set of movies, but they never do anything with its structure or do anything creative with the broadcast editing, leaving us apathetic.

September 5 isn't just a swing and a miss; the bat has swung directly into the third base line stands and hit a child. Its inability to engage with its subjects and horrible framing of the events with a current lens can't be understated. The attitude and use of specific tropes and vocabulary elicit memories of post-9/11 films brimming with anti-Arab sentiment. However, this movie not only flattens the hostage-takers into caricatures, but the hostages themselves are given no more reverence or depth. This could have been so exciting as an essential story, but it landed utterly flat. Don't let anyone compare this to Spotlight, be better.

Final Score: 3/10

Written by Kevin J. Pettit