September 5 (2025.12, A Well Packed Thriller )

September 5 : Michael’s Moments

Fifty years later, it is difficult to imagine just how important September 5, 1972, and the events chronicled in September 5, have become.  While Palestinians and Israelis had been fighting for decades already, the Munich massacre was the first time an assault on Israelis was staged in Europe.  And, clearly, staging it at the Olympics was designed to resonate immediately and broadly.  The 1972 Olympics was also the first time the games were televised live and broadcast around the world.  It was also significant that 1972 was the first, and only, time the Olympics were held in Germany post-World War II, just one generation after Hitler’s holocaust against the Jews.  All of these circumstances were obviously key elements of the terrorist calculus.

They are also precisely the novel elements that makes September 5 much more than just a tense thriller.  The moral dilemmas that all of the players confronted as they did something far more than their regular jobs required, compound their decision-making.  As Geoffrey Mason asks at one point, if they manage to film the execution of a hostage live and beam the result to nearly a billion people around the world, is this simply coverage of a story? Or have they become a tool of the terrorists?  As the first time that such an event is covered live on TV, what does it mean that the terrorists may also be watching the coverage?  As Roone Arledge supposedly asserts, was it the authorities responsibility to turn off the power?  Should someone else be telling the parents of the hostages NOT to watch the days events unfold?  

A good movie raises questions that transcend the obvious twists and turns of the plot – It should engage the viewer in bigger questions.  In addition to being a well crafted and engagingly acted movie, the script for September 5 digs deep into ethical questions that journalism seems to confront again and again with each new technological turn.  At what point do the media and the message become one?  And at what point does observation become participation? (3.5*)

September 5: What Others Think