Bring Them Down (15, 105mins)

September 5 (15, 95 mins)

Verdict: Taut thriller

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called December 7, 1941 ‘a date which will live in infamy’.

Tragically, the calendar now has quite a few more of them, including the one chronicled in an excellent documentary-style thriller, simply тιтled September 5.

That was the Tuesday during the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich when 11 members of the Israeli team ended up ᴅᴇᴀᴅ, after being taken hostage by Palestinian ‘Black September’ terrorists who threatened to kill one every hour unless their demands (of a wholesale release of prisoners from Israeli prisons) were met.

The story has been told before, both as documentary (Kevin Macdonald’s brilliant 1999 Oscar-winner One Day In September) and as drama (Steven Spielberg’s disappointingly turgid 2005 film Munich, which focused more on the Israeli mission, over the ensuing months and years, to ᴀssᴀssinate all those responsible for the mᴀssacre).    

This time, director and co-writer Tim Fehlbaum looks at the shocking events of that day 53 years ago entirely from the perspective of the US television network ABC, whose team was in West Germany to deliver a purely sporting narrative yet found itself at the heart of the first terrorist outrage to be broadcast live across the world. ABC’s transmission was apparently seen by more people than, three years earlier, had watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.

With a busy hand-held camera and a grainy texture to the pictures, as well as the insertion of actual archive footage, Fehlbaum very cleverly evokes both the chaos of the hostage crisis and the technological primitivism, compared with now, of the era.

Tim Fehlbaum looks at the shocking events of that day 53 years ago entirely from the perspective of the US television network ABC

With a busy hand-held camera and a grainy texture to the pictures, as well as the insertion of actual archive footage, Fehlbaum very cleverly evokes both the chaos of the hostage crisis and the technological primitivism, compared with now, of the era

The casting is spot-on. John Magaro is terrific as nervy but resourceful producer Geoffrey Mason, with Peter Sarsgaard as classy as ever as taciturn ABC Sports supremo Roone Arledge (pictured) determined to keep the broadcast from being commandeered by the network’s News division

We see history being recorded from a desperately cramped studio in which the air-conditioning has failed, with sweat pouring off everyone, while screen graphics are painstakingly ᴀssembled by hand.

The casting is spot-on. John Magaro is terrific as nervy but resourceful producer Geoffrey Mason, with Peter Sarsgaard as classy as ever as taciturn ABC Sports supremo Roone Arledge, determined to keep the broadcast from being commandeered by the network’s News division.

Ben Chaplin plays ABC’s head of operations Marvin Bader, with German actress Leonie Benesch as a fictionalised character but a useful one: a production ᴀssistant roped in as an interpreter.

With impressive sleight of hand, Fehlbaum makes it look as if the backroom team are in dialogue with the real-life presenters Jim McKay and Peter Jennings.

Even though we know how the story ends, the film, at a compellingly taut 95 minutes, is heart-thumpingly tense throughout and a deserving Oscar nominee for Best Original Screenplay.

There’s a startling moment when the ABC crew realise that the terrorists, too, are watching their live pictures of German police moving in on the apartment in the Olympic Village where the athletes are being held. And it’s all so authentic that we later feel their exhilaration when word arrives that the hostages, after being transported to a nearby airfield, have all been saved. Alas, it is not so.

The modern-day parallels with all this are stark, of course. But Fehlbaum and his co-writer Moritz Binder wisely make no attempt to force them on the audience. Indeed, at the start of the film, before the alarming sound of distant gunfire changes everything, we hear Arledge insisting that the painful spectre of the Holocaust should be raised in an interview with America’s multiple gold-medallist, Jewish swimmer Mark Spitz. So, if anything, we are encouraged to do the same as the protagonists, and contemplate not the future but the past. September 5 is a very skilled and concise piece of storytelling.

Bring Them Down (15, 105mins)

Verdict: Modern-day Irish ‘Western’ 

Bring Them Down sees neighbouring sheep farmers are locked in a feud

Bring Them Down is another thriller, also nicely done, yet its setting could hardly be more different than that of September 5. In the beautiful west of Ireland, two neighbouring sheep farmers are locked in a feud, which intensifies when one starts mutilating the other’s rams.

To ramp up emotions further, one farmer is an incomer from the north, married to the ex-girlfriend of the other, a Gaelic-speaking local.

Their growing enmity builds to a wildly overwrought ending, but this is nevertheless a highly promising debut by first-time director Christopher Andrews, a kind of Irish-accented Western enhanced by a fine cast including Christopher Abbott, Colm Meaney and Barry Keoghan – in an ‘eejit’ role strikingly similar to the one he played so marvellously in The Banshees Of Inisherin (2022).

Becoming Led Zeppelin (12A, 121mins)

Verdict: Stairway to fan heaven 

Rock God: Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page pictured performing on stage in 1975

Speaking of banshees, not everyone loves the music of Led Zeppelin. But if you do then Bernard MacMahon’s documentary Becoming Led Zeppelin is a must-see. Meticulously, in great detail and at great length, it charts the careers of each of the mighty rock band’s original members, telling some truly fabulous stories along the way. And did you know that in his days as a little-known session musician, virtuoso guitarist Jimmy Page played on Shirley Bᴀssey’s recording of a certain James Bond theme song? I’ll give you a clue. This is pub-quiz gold.

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Love Hurts (15, 83mins)

Ke Huy Quan, left, and Ariana DeBose in a scene from Love Hurts

AT THE tender age of 53, former child star turned Oscar-winning comeback kid Ke Huy Quan (Everything Everywhere All At Once) finally lands his first major leading man role in Love Hurts. Shame, then, that it’s so bad.

Quan is a mild-mannered real estate agent whose secret past – as a hitman – is revealed after a partner-in-crime he’d left for ᴅᴇᴀᴅ (Ariana DeBose) reappears on Valentine’s Day.

A misjudged blend of romance, cookie cutter wisdom (‘hiding isn’t living!’), uninspired comedy, poorly edited martial arts, and jarringly graphic violence, the only thing to love is a rather sweet Goonies reunion between Quan and his buddy, Sean Astin.

Dog Man (U, 89mins)

This film sees half man/half mutt police officer hero on a mission to capture ‘the world’s most evilest cat’

The fact that Dog Man is brought to you ‘from the creators of Captain Underpants’ gives you the flavour of this frenzied cartoon silliness.

A lavish, big-screen adaptation of Dav Pilkey’s bestselling comic books, this spin-off sees our half man/half mutt police officer hero on a skimpily narrated mission to capture ‘the world’s most evilest cat’ (voiced by Pete Davidson) while bonding with a very cute kitten (Lucas Hopkins Calderon).

Pleasingly playful and heartfelt, with distinctive crayon-style animation, the quickfire gags throw adults some bones — but the neuron-frazzling mayhem is aimed squarely at kids. Who will love it.