I saw September 5 (Paramount, 11.29) at the Chuck Jones theatre in Telluride, and my immediate reacion was “a very decent portrayal of a grim, sobering tragedy…it holds you in as it recreates the 1972 details and atmosphere and whatnot.

“Does it get into the whys and wherefores on the part of Black September’s terrorism or any of the general political particulars? Nope — it focuses solely on the strategic calls behind the reporting by ABC’s Munich-based news team, who were stationed only about 100 feet from the Israeli Olympic team’s condo.

“I didn’t feel under-fed or cheated, but I wanted to feel more of the totality of the tragedy.”

From Peter Debruge’s 8.29.24 review: “The Steven Spielberg film that September 5 most resembles is The Post, in its flurry of trying to act responsibly amid the incredible pressures of a breaking-news environment.

“September 5 takes us behind the scenes of the 17-hour Munich ordeal, beginning shortly before the attack and cataloging key decisions until just after the tragic finale, when World of Sports host Jim McKay famously confirmed the chilling news, ‘They’re all gone,’ on air.

“[And yet] as an in-the-trenches account of how ABC Sports approached the story, the film focuses primarily on a young, ambitious producer (played by a period-appropriate-looking John Magaro), based on veteran sports broadcaster Geoffrey Mason’s memory of events.

“ABC Sports may have gotten the story, but it also got it wrong, prematurely repeating an unconfirmed report that the hostages were recovered safely.

“Moritz and Fehlbaum’s matter-of-fact script lacks the punchy pressure-cooker sparring quality of inside-baseball series such as The Morning Show or Aaron Sorkin’s Sports Night, which can leave one feeling like the real story is happening elsewhere — and it is, since there’s only so much that news crews can extrapolate from telephoto lenses trained on a faraway balcony.

“When shocking incidents happen live, our imaginations tend to fill in what can’t be seen with the worst. In this case, revisiting it half a century later, knowing what happened doesn’t preclude us from wanting to get a better understanding of the specifics. But this movie’s insights are limited to the newsroom, focusing on such minutiae as TV hosts using the words ‘as we’re hearing,’ versus the reality of what transpired during the climactic disaster at Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base.”