1972: Munich's Black September

Gladly, I missed this Sky special when it was released since later on I got the opportunity to see different points of view about the Palestinian group Black September and their attack in the 1972 Munich Olympics. From the brilliant thriller "September 5" (the press perspective) to Aaron J. Klein's book "Striking Back", released on the same year as Spielberg's "Munich" (adapted from another book, and both have a wider focus on the Mossad manhunt for the terrorists and masterminds hidden all over the world), and the timing to appreciate this special couldn't be better. It's a quite detailed view about the tragic event with interviews with people related with the terrorist attack (Israeli ahtletes families; German investigators; and others), and also some slightly distracting re-enactment with actors recreating the tense moments of the hostages in the Olympic village, the police squad preparing their rescue and the disastrous tragic events at the airport.

It's a comprehensive good documentary to follow the major events about the attack and also to see the perspectives from the people involved, in one way or the other, how they reacted to everything going on. The highlight of it comes with a veteran German police authority meeting the wife of one of the Israeli athletes killed, as he apologizes for everything that went wrong during the hostages rescue and they both share their memories of it all and what wasn't known by both parties at the time (50 years ago). The lady in question (if I'm not mistaken) was the one responsible for leading a massive campaign of declassification of Mossad's secret documents relating the activities against the perpetrators, a battle of decades, as told in Klein's book.

A good special and companion piece to all the other available material related to the tragic Olympics, but I wasn't all that thrilled about the fictional recreation - except for the sequence with the German squad inside the airplane planning a careful attack against the terrorists if they'd go on board as previously planned. It's a great thrilling moment that for a while you keep imagining about how dangerous it all was and if they could succeed it without losing hostages, unlike what end up really happening with gun shooting on the airstrip and the grenades exploding the helicopters. Just the documentary and the interviews would be better as they give all the needed and critical insights - though more could be added about its infamous legacy related with security flaws and schemes during a massive world event, and how they'd later affected the future Olympics, similar sports events and awards shows. 8/10.