Product: One Day in September [VHS] (2006)
Rating: 3.0
A Dissenting Voice
It's not that this documentary is bad in any way, just that it's only okay. If you are looking for an introduction to this event, Aaron Klein's excellent book "Striking Back" is much more cogently presented. Anyone who has read "Striking Back" will learn very little new information here. My greatest reservation about this documentary is that it is too short. Had I not already known the names of the key players, especially on the German side, I would have found the exposition very confusing. The talking head interview subjects are not adequately identified. More time should have been spent on the bureaucratic problems between federal German officials and local Bavarian authorities. On the positive side, most of the massive German failures are accurately captured here.For some reason, the film doesn't mention Ankie Spitzer's decades-long struggle to learn the truth of what occurred from recalcitrant German officials. This is especially odd in that her story is prominently featured. Extensive time is spent on admittedly very moving recollections of family members, but it comes across as a too-easy appeal to our emotions in a film that should be dedicated to exposing the tragedies that compounded the tragedy of the terrorist attack. Those who unfairly criticize Spielberg's "Munich" for not being sufficiently sympathetic with the victims will find what they are looking for right here.One virtue of this film is an extensive interview with one of the surviving terrorists, and to its credit the film does not indulge in any cheap tricks to make him look more evil than he already is, and for the most part presents his story objectively, allowing his acts to speak for themselves. One side note is that the film identifies him as the only surviving terrorist, whereas Klein's research in "Striking Back" raises the very real likelihood that two of the terrorist are still alive, dispelling the popularly-held myth that Mossad killed all of them. As Klein effectively proves (and as "Munich" accurately presents), those initially killed by Israeli assassins in retribution for Munich were by and large low-level operatives who took no security precautions whatever (the Spring of Youth killings in Beiruit being an exception, as well as the later killing of Ali Hassan Salameh). "One Day in September" also gets high marks for objectivity, observing at the end that Israeli operatives killed several people whom they believed were involved in Munich, and Klein's book now proves that this involvement was often extremely attenuated.The film also takes a strong position that the Olympics should have been canceled or otherwise suspended, but I think that question is not so simple. At what point does the refusal to continue with planned activities only give the terrorists a greater sense of self-importance and accomplishment? However, the scenes of athletes chatting and sunbathing in the Olympic village while the Israelis were held at gunpoint only a few hundred feet away were just as chilling as they were at the time on live TV.What was needed here was less emotionalism and more rigorous analysis of what went wrong and why.