Film Talk: Sarsgaard and Chaplin in Olympic hell with September 5
Some films are just great at bringing the diamonds together.
The first flick I saw featuring Peter Sarsgaard (very wet behind the ears) was 1998’s sensational version of The Man in the Iron Mask. Starring a double helping of Leonardo DiCaprio, along with John Malkovich, Jeremy Irons and Gabriel Byrne, this romp of The Three Musketeers in their silver years saw Sarsgaard cast as Malkovich’s son. In a small but compelling part, he stood up alongside old guard royalty and one of the hottest properties of the moment and did not fade into the background.
My next helping of Sarsgaard came with Zach Braff’s Garden State – a 2004 American romcom that, at the time, very much captured the emo in me. With a bigger part than he had been given in the aforementioned Randall Wallace swashbuckler, Sarsgaard was superb. Opposite Braff himself along with Natalie Portman, Sarsgaard was the third leg of a sensational tripod, and clearly a talented star to be watched.
That said, it was admittedly many years before I personally paid due attention to another Sarsgaard flick. Yet in the meantime, another fantastic thesp caught my eye.
Though he’d been an established on-screen presence for some time, my first taste of Ben Chaplin came with 2009’s Dorian Gray. Chaplin was sensational in the role of Basil Hallward – the painter of the titular character’s fabled portrait. Though the flick as a whole divided critics, Chaplin’s performance was exceptional, and further great things could surely be expected. With 2018 BBC mini-series, Press, they arrived. Chaplin arguably gave the turn of his career as sleazy-come-good tabloid editor, Duncan Allen, and bigger projects were sure to come his way.
Now, the wait is over. Throwing Chaplin into the ring with Sarsgaard, September 5 has landed to tell us the tale of the Munich massacre – a terrorist attack that took place during the 1972 Summer Olympics.
With hard-hitting subject matter and two powerful talents leading the charge, this one has the makings of greatness. But does it deliver?..
SEPTEMBER 5 (UK 15/ROI 12A, 95 mins) ****
Released: February 6 (UK & Ireland)
Where were you on September 11, 2001, when hijacked passenger planes were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre?
More than likely, you were watching live news coverage of unimaginable tragedy unfolding in real time.
Almost 30 years earlier, a team of ABC Sports journalists covering the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics were responsible for the first live broadcast of a terrorist attack on television to an estimated global audience of 900 million people.
On September 5, cameras intended for glowing coverage of sporting excellence were retrained on the Olympic Village after eight Palestinians from the militant group Black September stormed the athletes’ accommodation, killing two members of the Israeli team.
Terrorists took a further nine Israelis hostage and demanded the release of prisoners held in Israel.
The world held its breath as German authorities attempted to negotiate a resolution without further bloodshed.
Swiss director Tim Fehlbaum relives the outrage from the perspective of the ABC Sports team in a gripping thriller guaranteed to have audiences chewing nails down to the cuticles, even if they know the tragic outcome.
A lean script written by Moritz Binder, Fehlbaum and Alex David steadily tightens a knot of tension in stomachs, rarely venturing outside a dimly lit and stiflingly hot control room where production crew are glued to flickering TV screens and radio frequencies, scavenging scraps of verifiable information to share with viewers.
ABC Sports junior producer Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) begins the early shift on September 5 with a small crew including technical director Jacques Lesgards (Zinedine Soualem) and native speaker Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch), who translates news coming out of the media centre and Olympic Village.
Head of operations Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin) is enjoying a few hours of sleep in a side room while ABC Sports president Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) has retired for the night to his hotel after thrilling coverage of Mark Spitz’s seventh gold in the swimming pool.
Gunshots ring out across the Olympic Village and Geoff confers with Marvin and Roone to make split-second decisions about the morality of capturing the potential execution of Israeli athletes live on screen.
September 5 is a masterful dramatisation of shocking events in 1972, when the home nation hoped that hosting the Games would restore its post-war reputation and not remind viewers of “the last time armed Germans patrolled fences”.
Fehlbaum exerts a vice-like grip over pacing, sky-rocketing our blood pressures with long takes on handheld cameras to nervously prowl ABC Sports’ makeshift broadcast facility, which is beset by technical gremlins.
He elicits a compelling lead performance from Magaro, with scintillating, sweat-beaded support from Sarsgaard and Chaplin.
DOG MAN (UK U/ROI PG, 89 mins) ***
Released: February 7 (UK & Ireland)
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s the body of a fallen police officer surgically attached to the head of his trusty four-legged friend.
Based on a series of graphic novels by Captain Underpants creator Dav Pilkey, Dog Man is a rumbustious animated caper set within the same fantastical universe as underwear-clad elementary school headteacher Benjamin Krupp, who is hypnotised into herodom by pupils George Beard and Harold Hutchins.
The mischievous tykes make cameos in writer-director Peter Hastings’ good-natured film, which draws inspiration from the first three instalments of the written franchise, most notably A Tale Of Two Kitties and the introduction of “the world’s most evilest cat” as a worthy-ish adversary for the hybrid supa hero.
Young fans of the books will be delighted by a briskly paced page-to-screen adaptation (children in my screening were visibly bouncing as if spring-loaded in their seats) and a non-threatening comedic tone that begins with the life-saving medical procedure that heralds a crime-biting canine in Ohkay City.
Parents and older children don’t have many narrative bones to gnaw besides an occasional droll visual gag (the illuminated “Now Serving” sign inside the operating theatre of The Major Hospital In Town) and delightful references to Die Hard and Aliens that will soar above the heads of the target audience.
Hastings’ script relies on toilet humour for puerile giggles: one of the cat antagonist’s Machiavellian creations is a nose-shaped monstrosity called The Butt Sniffer 2000.
“Don’t show that one!” a self-censoring character gasps.
At the centre of the madness is dim-witted police officer Knight (voiced by Hastings) and fiercely intelligent pet dog Greg, who are victims of a ticking time bomb set by cat master criminal Petey (Pete Davidson) at the conveniently signposted Abandoned Expendable Warehouse.
Hospital staff enact a hare-brained idea to save the badly injured heroes and Dog Man is born, to the chagrin of the mayor (Cheri Oteri) and the long-suffering police chief (Lil Rel Howery), and the delight of Live! Breaking News Live! reporter Sarah Hatoff (Isla Fisher) and her swarthy Scottish cameraman, Seamus (Billy Boyd).
Petey’s chaotic attempts at world domination with his despairing assistant (Poppy Liu) give birth to adorable kitten clone Li’l Petey (Lucas Hopkins Calderon) and resuscitate telekinetic supervillain Flippy the Fish (Ricky Gervais) with predictably cat-aclysmic consequences.
Dog Man is a low-stakes, high-energy romp rendered in colourful animation that honours the whimsical, childlike aesthetic of Pilkey’s graphic novels.
The plot unfolds “like a lawn chair in a hurricane”, as one character so aptly puts it, barrelling excitedly between set pieces including a Godzilla-like rampage of anthropomorphised multi-storey buildings brought to life by a ruptured pipe at the Living Spray factory.
Heart-tugging sentiment is laid on thickly with a trowel.
LOVE HURTS (UK 15/ROI 16, 83 mins) ***
Released: February 7 (UK & Ireland)
Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan breaks bones in a fast-paced action comedy from the producers of Nobody, which marks the feature directorial debut of Jonathan Eusebio.
Real estate agent Marvin Gable (Quan) has managed to walk away from his old life as a hit man and now sells des res properties to couples and families.
He recently won regional realtor of the year and woos potential buyers with hand-baked, heart-shaped cookies.
Thuggish henchmen track Marvin down and dole out a beating courtesy of his brother Knuckles (Daniel Wu), who is desperate to wreak revenge on Marvin’s elusive former accomplice Rose (Ariana DeBose).
The realtor reluctantly meets the threat with martial arts skills and wanton violence.
BRING THEM DOWN (UK 15/ROI 15A, 106 mins) ***
Released: February 7 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)
First-time writer-director Christopher Andrews accelerates a long-running feud between families in rural Ireland.
Michael (Christopher Abbott) tends to his family farm and an ailing father (Colm Meaney), isolated from his community.
He is haunted by a terrible accident in the past and prefers the company of his flock of sheep than rival farmer Gary (Paul Ready) or his son Jack (Barry Keoghan). Old wounds between neighbouring clans are reopened.
