Should you see this movie?
Narrative
During the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, an American sports broadcast team must adapt to provide live coverage of Israeli athletes being held hostage by a terrorist group. I won’t flag this as a spoiler, because the only spoilers will be for the events of the hostage crisis that you may already be aware of. YES. Does Paramount know how to market this movie? NO. This movie is set around the terrorist attack on the 1972 Olympics, but is actually about the ABC sports team, who are suddenly assigned to provide live coverage of the attack.
Unlike other recent movies (eg
We see everything from the team’s point of view. Late Night With The Devil), this is not a film, but simply a dramatization of the events. So the production doesn’t use a shaky camera, but rather uses the “cutting edge” technology available at the time. Most of the action takes place behind the scenes with the team, so you don’t know the people or their names. Jim McKay is the main face of the news, and viewers old enough to have watched sports in that era will know him. Peter Jennings is on hand as the only news anchor rather than the sportscaster, and he comes across as a refreshingly idiotic idiot.
The team has a hard time getting the information out
Howard Cosell does a voiceover, and for people you know, that’s it. I want to commend the mix of new and archival footage and audio. I assume they used archival footage, but it’s completely transparent, so I’m not sure (and the credits rolled too quickly). Mostly it’s due to the technology of the time (which will sound boring if I describe it, but it’s presented in an engaging way). But there are also ethical issues that journalists might not need to discuss. For example: should they broadcast live video from the scene of the attack when that could lead to the broadcast of someone’s murder?
This seems unfair to the Germans of the time
The film covers about a 24-hour period, and only tells us what the team knows. This leaves us with some uncertainties, including: was it Black September? and what really happened in the foggy war scene at the airport? This last question is a little unsettling because it feels like once the terrorists and hostages were cleared from the Olympic Village, the German police perhaps cared less about protecting the hostages. Before the action begins, we are treated to introductory scenes to meet the characters and see how they cover sporting events. I was surprised to see an admission here that politics was inserted into sports coverage, both to stoke Cold War rivalries and to capitalize on lingering WWII grievances.
It just works
Once the action begins, I was surprised at how often I found myself on the edge of my seat. The film is absolutely captivating. It works as a time capsule. It works as a behind-the-scenes reveal. It works as a terrorism story.