One Day in September
2.5/4
Starring (voice): Michael Douglas
Rated R for Some Graphic Violent Images
Don't you just hate it when a good movie makes a move that's so boneheaded and stupid that you wonder what the hell the director was thinking? It happened in "Hollow Man" with the unnecessary (not to mention brutal) murder of a dog, and it happens here. Most of "One Day in September" is an engaging documentary; it held my interest a lot more than many members of this genre. Then at the end, the very end, it makes a decision so bad that it becomes reprehensible.
Kevin Macdonald is a good filmmaker. "Touching the Void" is one of the best documentaries I've seen, and "State of Play" manages to effectively condense a miniseries into a two hour movie with little loss or confusion. "The Last King of Scotland" was also very good, but it required background knowledge of Idi Amin (played by Forest Whitaker in an Oscar-winning performance) that I did not have. Macdonald's work is effective, although never standout, until the end.
The film details the events of the 1972 Munich hostage crisis. A group of Palestinian terrorists stormed into the rooms of some Israeli athletes and held them hostage. They, and a few of the terrorists, were killed during a botched rescue attempt.
"One Day in September" doesn't go into much detail, but it efficiently tells the story of how arrogance, fanaticism and shocking incompetence left more than a dozen people dead and shocked the world.
I liked how Kevin Macdonald doesn't sermonize. He lets the players speak for themselves...at least for the most part (one would believe that the officials who completely bungled the rescue attempt are still smarting from the disaster. Unless they're deceased, which after forty years is a real possibility too). He gives voice to the lone surviving terrorist (who appears on camera for the first time) and while it's not enough, it does give us a brief understanding of their motivations and how these terrorists were able to commit these horrible acts (the terrorist is still proud of what he had done because it brought attention to the plight of the Palestinians).
I also liked how he used archive footage to tell the story. Save for the interviews (which are brief but tell us what we need to know) and come basic computer animations to show what happened during the botched rescue attempt, it's all footage from the actual event. I was surprised at how much of it there was, although given the attention paid to it at the time, I guess I shouldn't be. The voiceover narration by Michael Douglas (I guess Morgan Freeman was unavailable, although Douglas fits the material better) is sparse; Macdonald only uses it when it's necessary.
Macdonald keeps things moving. He uses a little too much footage of the 1972 Olympics to set the scene, but for the most part the film moves at a nice clip. It's engaging and once it starts, it never slows down. But the ending is so bad that I was actually questioning whether Macdonald had any respect for the victims. There are times when the film seems more like a thriller than a tragedy, but I was willing to forgive because the tone was respectful. But when everything has gone up in smoke, Macdonald shows the carnage with rock music that is grossly inappropriate. What was going through his mind when he decided on that?
Save for the ending, this is a decent documentary. It tells the story that Spielberg rushed through in "Munich," although his focus was on what happened after. It has a heart (Macdonald humanizes a few of the athletes, specifically Andre Spitzer through the words of his wife and daughter, although few of the others are given their due), and the story is engaging. But the ending sinks it.
Starring (voice): Michael Douglas
Rated R for Some Graphic Violent Images
Don't you just hate it when a good movie makes a move that's so boneheaded and stupid that you wonder what the hell the director was thinking? It happened in "Hollow Man" with the unnecessary (not to mention brutal) murder of a dog, and it happens here. Most of "One Day in September" is an engaging documentary; it held my interest a lot more than many members of this genre. Then at the end, the very end, it makes a decision so bad that it becomes reprehensible.
Kevin Macdonald is a good filmmaker. "Touching the Void" is one of the best documentaries I've seen, and "State of Play" manages to effectively condense a miniseries into a two hour movie with little loss or confusion. "The Last King of Scotland" was also very good, but it required background knowledge of Idi Amin (played by Forest Whitaker in an Oscar-winning performance) that I did not have. Macdonald's work is effective, although never standout, until the end.
The film details the events of the 1972 Munich hostage crisis. A group of Palestinian terrorists stormed into the rooms of some Israeli athletes and held them hostage. They, and a few of the terrorists, were killed during a botched rescue attempt.
"One Day in September" doesn't go into much detail, but it efficiently tells the story of how arrogance, fanaticism and shocking incompetence left more than a dozen people dead and shocked the world.
I liked how Kevin Macdonald doesn't sermonize. He lets the players speak for themselves...at least for the most part (one would believe that the officials who completely bungled the rescue attempt are still smarting from the disaster. Unless they're deceased, which after forty years is a real possibility too). He gives voice to the lone surviving terrorist (who appears on camera for the first time) and while it's not enough, it does give us a brief understanding of their motivations and how these terrorists were able to commit these horrible acts (the terrorist is still proud of what he had done because it brought attention to the plight of the Palestinians).
I also liked how he used archive footage to tell the story. Save for the interviews (which are brief but tell us what we need to know) and come basic computer animations to show what happened during the botched rescue attempt, it's all footage from the actual event. I was surprised at how much of it there was, although given the attention paid to it at the time, I guess I shouldn't be. The voiceover narration by Michael Douglas (I guess Morgan Freeman was unavailable, although Douglas fits the material better) is sparse; Macdonald only uses it when it's necessary.
Macdonald keeps things moving. He uses a little too much footage of the 1972 Olympics to set the scene, but for the most part the film moves at a nice clip. It's engaging and once it starts, it never slows down. But the ending is so bad that I was actually questioning whether Macdonald had any respect for the victims. There are times when the film seems more like a thriller than a tragedy, but I was willing to forgive because the tone was respectful. But when everything has gone up in smoke, Macdonald shows the carnage with rock music that is grossly inappropriate. What was going through his mind when he decided on that?
Save for the ending, this is a decent documentary. It tells the story that Spielberg rushed through in "Munich," although his focus was on what happened after. It has a heart (Macdonald humanizes a few of the athletes, specifically Andre Spitzer through the words of his wife and daughter, although few of the others are given their due), and the story is engaging. But the ending sinks it.
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