49/39
Should you watch this movie?
During the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, an American sportscasting team must adapt to a live broadcast of Israeli athletes being held hostage by a terrorist group. I won’t call this a spoiler, because the only spoilers will be the events of the hostage crisis, which you probably already know about. Yes. Does Paramount know how to promote this movie? No. The movie is set around the terrorist attack on the 1972 Olympics, but it’s actually the ABC sportscasting team, who are suddenly tasked with reporting on the attack live.
Unlike other recent films (eg
We see everything from the team’s perspective. Late Night With The Devil), this movie is not presented as found footage, but simply as a dramatization of events. Therefore, the production does not use a shaky camera, but uses “modern art.” Technology available at the time. Most of the action takes place behind the scenes with the film crew, so you don’t know the people or their names. Jim McKay is the main face of the reporting, and viewers old enough to watch sports of the time will recognize him. Peter Jennings is the only news subject, not a sports reporter, and he seems like a pleasant idiot.
The film crew has a lot of problems getting the news out
Howard Cosell gives a voiceover report, and that’s the end of People You Know. I want to give credit to the mix of new and archival video and audio. I suspect archival video was used, but it’s completely seamless, so I’m not sure (and the credits rolled too quickly). A lot of this is due to the technology of the time (which will sound boring if I describe it, but it’s presented in an interesting way). But there are also ethical issues that focus groups probably don’t need to discuss. For example: Should the video of the attack scene be broadcast live if it could lead to someone being murdered?
This seems unfair to the Germans of the time
The film covers a period of about 24 hours and only tells us what the film crew knows. This leaves us with a few uncertainties, including: Was it Black September? And what really happened in the fog of war at the airport. This last question is somewhat troubling, because it feels like once the terrorists and hostages left the Olympic Village, the German police were probably less concerned about protecting the hostages. Before the action begins, we get a few walls of setup to get to know the characters and see how they cover sports. I was surprised to see the acknowledgement here of the integration of politics into sports broadcasting, both in rekindling Cold War rivalries and in capitalizing on long-standing grievances from World War II.
The film is absolutely riveting
Once the action started, I was surprised how often I was on the edge of my seat. It works as a time capsule. It works as a behind-the-scenes reveal. It works as a story of terrorism. It works.