September 5, which bows in limited release Nov. 29, re-creates the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage crisis — a dark affair that resulted in the death of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches, their five captors from the Palestinian terrorist group Black September and a police officer. The Paramount film is told from the perspective of the ABC Sports team stationed in the West German city to cover the Games (Peter Sarsgaard portrays ABC Sports president Roone Arledge).
The crisis and its aftermath have been dramatized before. In Sword of Gideon, a 1986 Canadian telefilm, Steven Bauer plays a Mossad agent who hunts down the Black September plotters at the direction of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (Colleen Dewhurst). That film was based on the 1984 book Vengeance by George Jones — which also served as source material for Steven Spielberg’s Munich. The 2005 historical thriller starred Eric Bana as the Israeli security expert who convenes a group of assassins (Daniel Craig and Ciarán Hinds among them) to enact an international revenge plot. The script, co-written by Eric Roth and Tony Kushner (in the playwright’s first collaboration with Spielberg), explored questions of morality and inner turmoil among the killers as they go about their cold-blooded mission — drawing condemnation from various pro-Israel factions, including the Zionist Organization of America, which labeled Kushner an “Israel hater.”
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Coming off a whirlwind media tour that year for War of the Worlds, Spielberg at first chose not to do press for the somber Munich, which had no glitzy premiere. “Sometimes silence speaks louder than everyone else,” DreamWorks marketing chief Terry Press — the film was a DreamWorks/Universal co-production — told THR at the time. “There’s so much blather in the world that sometimes quiet makes an impression.” The director did relent, however, appearing on the Dec. 12 cover of Time, which touted his “secret masterpiece.” Munich earned five Oscar nominations, including those for best picture, best screenplay and best director.
This story first appeared in a November stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
