Richard Crouse

SYNOPSIS: In “September 5,” a claustrophobic new thriller starring Peter Sarsgaard and Ben Chaplin, and now playing in theatres, broadcast executive Roone Arledge oversees the ABC coverage of the terrorist attack on Israeli Olympic team members at the 1972 summer games in Munich, West Germany.

CAST: Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin, Leonie Benesch, Zinedine Soualem, Corey Johnson, Georgina Rich, Benjamin Walker, Rony Herman. Co-written and directed by Tim Fehlbaum.

REVIEW: Early on in “September 5” television producer Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) says this about his television coverage of the Olympics: “It’s not about politics, it’s about emotion.”

The same could be said about the film.

Of course, echoes of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine reverberate throughout, but this is more a frantically paced, behind the scenes look at high-stakes newsgathering and the ethics of how the stories are told.

It rewinds the clock to a time when society was more a monoculture, when the news was watched by, well, pretty much everyone. We’re told that more people watched the ABC coverage of this terrorist attack than watched Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon.

The eyes of the world were on them, and in a brisk 94 minutes, director Tim Fehlbaum tells the story of a complicated terrorism situation the ABC crew, by virtue of their proximity to the action, were in a unique position to cover and broadcast the first acts of terrorism ever shown on live TV.

It’s a closed room drama where 90% of the action takes place in a broadcast control room. Tensions fray, shots are called, and news is made, but what Fehlbaum doesn’t concentrate on is the act itself, the massacre by the group Black September.

Instead “September 5” asks if, by showing the hostage situation live on television where the terrorists could watch themselves and the police’s response, they were fulfilling the public’s right to know or making the situation worse. Screenwriters Moritz Binder, Alex David and Fehlbaum present this and other big ethical questions regarding the job and responsibility of journalism but leave the task of answering them up to the audience.

However you feel about the decisions made on that day, in our era of “fake news” and an eroded trust of mainstream newsgathering it’s thrilling to see the nuts and bolts of how breaking stories unfold and the quick decisions that form the news we see on television.

On the downside, “September 5” is more interested in whip fast editing and forward momentum than characters. The main cast effectively hold our attention, but don’t offer up much in terms of characterization. They are the blunt instruments Fehlbaum uses to create tension, and while it works, it would have been nice to have more of a sense of who these people are.

Perhaps “September 5’s” most interesting aspect, however, is in its ability to wring suspense and tension out of well-known historical events. We know how this story will end, and yet Fehlbaum and editor Hansjörg Weißbrich have us inching toward the edge of our seats as each minute of this tautly rendered story passes. They clearly took Arledge’s maxim, “It’s not about politics, it’s about emotion,” to heart.