I have been writing about films on the internet for quite a long time now and, to be honest, some of them are easier to find things to say about than others. By 'things to say' I mean things that are interesting, possibly insightful, hopefully mildly humorous on occasion; things that make a piece worth reading whether you've no intention of watching the film, have already seen it several times, or can't make your mind up either way. We cater to a broad audience here.

As a result of my chronic struggle with the English language and the principles of critical bushido, I am able to offer some insights into which films are most likely to give me a headache, and which I can knock out a thousand words about in less than an hour, all things being equal. Easiest of all are bad genre movies from decades ago; these are as enjoyable to make fun of (in a loving way, of course) as they are to watch. Just plain bad films are also no problem to get to grips with. Documentaries can be tricky, as the danger is you always find yourself reviewing the subject matter rather than the actual film (see, for example, the review of Hollywoodland from last year). Big-budget blockbusters aren't much more demanding than their spiritual ancestors, the bad genre movies. Really properly classic movies tend to have a bit of depth about them which makes them quite easy to work with. The same is true of most new films with a bit of quality about them. The kind of film that really makes me scratch my head and struggle for things to share is a solid, really competent film from the respectable end of genre, probably shading into naturalistic drama. I find myself just going 'It does thing A really well. . . and it does thing B really well. . . and thing C is pretty good too. . . ' Which may be true, it's just not very interesting to read about.

Which brings us to Tim Fehlbaum (whose English name must therefore be the rather wonderfully euphonious Timothy Mystery) and his movie September 5. I, truth be told, would not have been able to speak with any authority about what this film was about prior to seeing the trailer, but this is the only element of it which appears to presuppose familiarity on the part of the viewer.

It opens with a brief prefatory section going into some of the technical details of the Munich Olympics of 1972 and the logistics of what it took to send satellite footage across the Atlantic back in those days (clue: a satellite). Responsible for handling covering of the Games is the network ABC and much of the movie takes place in a reconstruction of their control gallery a short distance outside the Olympic Village.

Another long day at the twentieth Olympiad is drawing to a close as the film gets underway, with the ABC team seeming rather jaded by it all, and the lack of American interest in the event. ABC sports president Roone Arledge (Peter Saarsgard) is even resorting to provocative stunts such as focusing on the reaction of German athletes to being beaten by their Jewish American peers. (This evokes a queasily familiar sense of recognition: ethnic and cultural faultlines being exploited.) The graveyard shift continues, with important maintenance being done – the punctiliousness of some of the German technicians not exactly endearing them to the ABC crew – and then everyone is startled by the sound of shots coming from the athletes' accommodation.

It soon becomes clear that the local police are sealing off the village, where something terrible is in progress – eleven Israeli athletes have been taken hostage by a Palestinian terrorist organisation. The authorities, whose priority all along has been to show a reformed Germany, are clearly overwhelmed. This is a lot for the sports team to do with too – can they do the story justice for the viewers at home? And should that really be their top priority anyway?

I knew only the barest outline of what happened at the Munich Olympics, so perhaps a film like this one is overdue (I am aware that the events shown here are essentially the backstory to Steven Spielberg's Munich, but I haven't seen that, unfortunately). As I say, the film makes no assumptions about pre-existing knowledge and essentially functions as a thriller, with the story being told solely from the point-of-view of the ABC sports team. It's an ensemble effort for both characters and actors, with Saarsgard sharing the screen with Ben Chaplin (as ABC's head of operations) and John Magaro (as the guy in charge of actually running the broadcast). Playing their German translator is Leonie Benesch, who is as good here as she was in The Teachers' Lounge last year.

It is mainly a story of their desperate scramble to do something they are unprepared and ill-equipped for, and there is something of the spirit of Apollo 13 in their attempts to keep the show on the air – pushing a heavy studio camera outside for long shots of the village, disguising one of the team as an athlete so he can sneak through the cordon into the village, actually hiding from the West German police at one point. There is excitement and the occasional flash of humour here, and the film makes the interesting choice not to restage the actual ABC broadcast itself, but to actually incorporate sections of it into the film (thus ABC's Jim McCay and Peter Jennings are posthumously playing themselves, effectively).

And beyond all this more serious issues keep surfacing. Naturally, any film about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has potential to be a hot potato currently, but September 5 takes the reasonable position that any terrorist attack is an outrage and doesn't get bogged down in the wider context. What the film does allow itself to do is discuss some of the journalistic ethics involved – at one point the West German police abandon plans for an assault on the terrorists, as it is realised their preparations have been shown on live TV by ABC, who the terrorists are watching. Where does journalistic integrity end in a situation like this? Should the network broadcast executions on live TV? Should they be the first to break a new development, or wait for confirmation from a reputable source? All important questions and more relevant than ever today.

The success of September 5 comes from the way it manages to weave these kinds of concerns into a genuinely gripping narrative, populated by believable characters. As I say, I wasn't familiar with this story before seeing the film – perhaps I should say, not familiar enough – but even if I had been I think this would still have been an involving thriller with enough gravitas to lift it beyond the confines of its genre. An extremely well-made and watchable film.

Awix

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