[3] Wolper asked eight directors to select their own crews and create a segment which would capture some aspect of the Munich Games.

Peter Rainer of Bloomberg News wrote that, "Schlesinger's is the only segment that fully acknowledges the Black September terrorist attacks, in which 11 Israeli athletes and coaches, and a West German policeman, were murdered."

Gradually the visuals sharpen, the stadium sounds come up, but, for the most part, the pole vaulters rising into the sky remain superslow abstractions.

Along with his great editor Dede Allen, who cut Bonnie and Clyde, Penn anatomizes the action without ever losing sight of the fact that these athletes, including USA's Bob Seagren, are men and not gods (as Riefenstahl might have us believe)" — referring to Leni Riefenstahl's 1938 documentary Olympia.

Rainer sees French director Claude Lelouch's segment as a welcome contrast to the other directors' worshipful heroic depictions: "Lelouch's The Losers ... shows us a boxer who rants in the ring after his defeat; wrestlers gamely trying to fight after tearing ligaments and dislocating limbs; swimmers treading befuddled in the pool after their last losing lap.