40/21
Should you watch this movie?
During the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, an American sports team must prepare to report live on the Israeli athletes being taken hostage by a terrorist group. I won’t mark this as a spoiler because the only spoiler is about the hostage situation, which you probably already know. Yes. Does Paramount know how to market this movie? No. This movie is set around the terrorist attack at the 1972 Olympics, but it’s really about the ABC athletes who are suddenly tasked with reporting the attack live.
Unlike other recent films (eg
We see everything from the crew’s perspective. Late Night With The Devil), this film is not presented as found footage, but rather a dramatization of the events. The production doesn’t rely on shaky cameras, but instead uses the “state of the art” technology available at the time. Most of the action is done by the crew behind the scenes, so you don’t know the people or their names. Jim McKay is the face of the newscasts, and viewers old enough to watch sports in this era will know him. Peter Jennings is the only newscaster on the scene, not a sports reporter, and he’s refreshingly like a jerk.
Howard Cosell does the talking, and it’s familiar
I’d like to praise the mix of new and archived video and audio. I assume they used some stock footage, but it’s completely seamless, so I’m not sure (and the credits rolled too quickly). The team faces a lot of challenges in getting the news out. A lot of it has to do with the technology of the time (which sounds boring to describe, but it’s beautifully presented). But there are also ethical issues that news crews don’t have to discuss. For example: Should they broadcast live video from the scene of the attack if it could result in someone being killed?
This seems unfair to the Germans of the time
The film covers a period of about 24 hours and only tells you what the crew knows. This leaves some uncertainty, most notably: Was it Black September? And what actually happened in the foggy scene of war at the airport? The latter question is a bit unsettling, as we get the impression that after the terrorists and hostages left the Olympic Village, the German police were less interested in protecting the hostages. Before the action begins, we get a few introductory scenes to get to know the characters and see how they deal with sports. I was surprised to see the admission here that politics is entering sports coverage – partly to heighten Cold War rivalries and partly to exploit lingering grievances from World War II.
It just works
Once the action got going, I was surprised at how often I found myself on the edge of my seat. The film is completely immersive. It works like a time capsule. It works like a behind-the-scenes look. It works like a story about terrorism.