The Tillman Story (2010/Sony DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: B Documentary
Film: B+
The
Oscars for 2011 of 2010 films have a good selection of material from a truly
awful year for releases, but could there be any glaring omissions? For me, there is only one and it is in there
most controversial category, Best Documentary.
The problems are still many, though I was happy to see Waiting For Superman omitted. At the same time, I was shocked (but not
surprised) to see Amir Bar-Lev’s The
Tillman Story (2010) about the strange fate of a good man who was used
before and after his death in terrible ways.
Most
people in the country came to know Patrick Tillman as a very successful NFL
football player, the kind that made the NFL great. Very well paid, he was disturbed by the
controversial 9/11/01 attacks and decided to actually walk away from his high
paying job and join the Army Rangers in 2002.
It was a decision that made national news and either had people saying
he was crazy for leaving such a big paying job, that he was being patriotic in
a big way and/or was making a big mistake in some eyes considering some of the
unanswered questions about the events of 9/11.
Conspiracy
theories aside, Tillman and his brother signed on for three years and then
Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld even took the highly unusual step of sending
him a letter of thanks. This was very
rare. As Tillman served, everything
seemed fine, though he landed up touring in Iraq
when he expected to be in Afghanistan. Either way, it is a high risk situation and
anyone who sings on knows it, though you would at least expect full disclosure
if something goes wrong.
It did.
Tillman
was shot and killed. It was first
reported to be enemy fire, something the media and Bush II White House used in
an almost Orwellian fashion to preach about high sacrifice against the “enemy”
to attract more people to join the military at a time when reports of
harassment of potential recruits were circulating and an inane (even insane)
ban on showing the dead arriving from overseas was on in a society that is
supposed to have a free and unfettered press.
They used to call that journalism.
Then it
was reported that Tillman was actually killed by friendly fire, yet this was
also very odd and a whole new round of questions and stalling started to take
place. What exactly was happening
here? One red flag was how this became
connected to the fraudulent Jessica Lynch fiasco, while another was simply how
things were not adding up.
Rumsfeld
was experimenting with small groups of troops with insufficient supplies at the
worst possible time, as if any time was good, but especially after 9/11, it
rang like the constant, seemingly endless bad judgment he was always displaying
that will forever be summed up in the ironic quote from Bush: “Good job Rummy!”
after an absolute total disaster has occurred that is now a permanent part of
the lexicon. This is as sad an example
as any.
The
government tried to blame someone on a lower rank for Tillman’s death, but that
made no sense including to his lawyer father, who eventually wrote an angry
letter to them, which suddenly got the ball rolling on an inquiry backed by
leaked documents. The rest will not make
any sense unless you see this key documentary.
However,
a few odd things can still be addressed as I strongly recommend this DVD (which
is also on Blu-ray) and that includes a sudden attempt to give Tillman the
opportunity to go back to his NFL job and be honorably discharged early. Why?
Who would want this and how high up would such a thing have to go to
even make such a situation possible? When
Tillman did not except, he was later killed.
So who
wanted him out of the way?
Why was
he such a threat?
Who is
hiding what?
With Bush
explicit about his born again Christianity, was it a problem for his
administration to have a heroic man who happened not to be religious? Were they afraid of a working-class hero
without a Christo-centrist view a threat to their power? Can higher ups like Rumsfeld not have known
anything about anything despite him sending a letter to Tillman, then having
sent (as it is revealed) another letter to insider(s) to “keep their eye” on
Tillman?
Something
is very wrong here.
As for
the NFL, the fiasco at the 45th Super Bowl and possible upcoming
strike show they do not have their act together. As the documentary Blood Equity (reviewed elsewhere on this site) shows, they are not
above doing great wrong and ignoring it either.
Following
just the reconstruction of what might have happened, without ruining anything,
none of the reconstructions of the events of that fatal day add up. When I was done watching, I ran through every
possibility and now believe what happened is even uglier than this documentary
thinks.
As for
Mr. Rumsfeld, he is still in denial, still cannot admit he is wrong about
anything and has a whole new chance to revise history with a tour for his new
book about his side of his Secretary tenure.
I have not read the book, but I wonder if Tillman even comes up. If he is busy dodging his many errors and
mistakes still not taking responsibility for anything, it give him a chance to
try and make what happened with Tillman go away.
With all
this stalling and lying, as ugly as this is, there is only one way left to find
out the truth about how Pat Tillman was killed.
We have to assume it is some kind of political assassination or the like
by someone until we can disprove it,
because whatever happened, it was not just some accident that just happened
(are you listening Rand Paul?). It was
the death of a good man, hero or not, who was an individualist in the real
sense of the world who may have happened to be an inconvenient soldier.
The anamorphically
enhanced 1.78 X 1 is a mix of old analog video footage, degraded video footage,
various film formats, low-def digital and newer High Definition footage
(especially the new interviews) offers the usual mix and plays very well. I thought the editing was exceptional and
made it all very watchable. The Dolby
Digital 5.1 mix combined new audio and many often monophonic audio sources and
though there is no serious soundfield here per se, it too is well edited and
music tends to have the best fidelity. The
only extra is a feature length audio commentary by the director, but this will
likely not be the last word on the subject.
Neither
will this review.
- Nicholas Sheffo
