Deserving its new Oscar status as Best Documentary, "One Day in September" reminds us that documentaries are rarely released theatrically and have long since been the province of television. This has led to the typical TV documentary being, creatively at least, dull in the extreme, consisting as it does of talking heads and a bunch of clips.

"One Day in September", by contrast, owes much to the craft of cinema, and includes huge amounts of ebb and flow, explosive scenes, quiet moments and the stirring use of music. The events themselves, stemming from the hostage-taking of eleven Israeli athletes by eight Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics, are possessed of a natural drama and so prove of great benefit to director Kevin MacDonald (whose brother Andrew famously produced "Trainspotting").

Yet MacDonald employs the drama to heighten, not hype, the truth, and the sadness and hopelessness of almost every moment are never blotted out.

The desire of the German authorities to banish memories of the 1936 Olympics (and therefore of Nazism), their ghastly incompetence as they struggle to come to the rescue, and the agony of the folks back home all contribute to a properly bleak mood, yet MacDonald's way with snappy editing and surprising visual shifts lends the film the pulse and pace of a highly hypnotic thriller. One to seek out.