Post by Richie3Jack on Jul 28, 2011 11:07:06 GMT -5
I had contemplated whether or not to write this because there was an overall defining theme from the documentary that struck a chord with me that made me averse to writing a review for this. Eventually, I started to look at the movie in a different light and thought that there could be some positive out of writing a review.
I first came across Pat Tillman well before he joined the Army Rangers. I used to be a big fan of NFL writer 'Dr. Z' Paul Zimmerman and he had selected Tillman to his All-Pro team. I hadn't really heard that much about Tillman and soon discovered that he was not your average football player and really not your average person. There was large part of a true 'renaissance man' in him in a day and age when athletes are more worried about what touchdown celebration they are going to use and what their reality TV show is going to be like.
In a sense, I was not all that shocked when Tillman announced that he was going to give up his contract to join the Army Rangers. Certainly, it was a surprise, but not a complete and utter shock. For me, that was saved for when he killed.
This documentary is a great documentary. However, it also sucked the life out of me as well. You start to see that Pat Tillman and his family were used as badly as a somebody can use another human being (much less an entire family). And what was worse is the sheer amount of people, regardless of their stance on the war or their political affiliations, that were/are in on the using and abusing of Tillman and his family.
Even the statute of Tillman outside the university of Phoenix Stadium resonates that to a degree with them carefully sculpting a statue with Nike cleats on it.
I doubt any viewer would expect otherwise, but for fair warning...this is not a feel good story by any means. IMO, it's a story of how selfish our society can be. If you think about it, all Pat Tillman seemed to want was to go find Bin Laden and bring him to justice and to not have any preferential treatment or notoriety of him joining the Rangers. Something that the military does with every solider...but they couldn't even give him that.
The documentary itself starts off with the intial aftermath with his death. Then it goes into his childhood, his family and career. Then his decision to join the Army and then leading up to his death and coverup beyond it.
My experience from this is that it was all very ambiguous in nature. The circumstances of his death didn't make a lot of sense. Particularly the award of the Silver Star. My grandfather was awarded the Silver Star and Bronze Star in World War II. He probably could've been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for what he did, but as he once told my dad he didn't want it because 'all of those guys are dead' (which isn't exactly true, but most of them wind up dead).
It's not an attempt to nitpick or complain, but it's just that when I had heard that Tillman was awarded the Silver Star, it just seemed like he had not earned it like men such as my grandfather did. And as the movie shows, Pat's father thought the same thing as well.
From there, it seemed that the message from the media was that the Tillman family was immediately outraged by his killing and immediately were looking for justice and that they believed that their son had been assassinated and would not give up until their son's killers were brought to justice.
But, that was far from the case. You'll see things like the Tillman's originally believing that their son was killed in combat until a fellow solider in his platoon told them otherwise. And then the massive coverup and how it was pretty obvious that the entire chain of command, up to the former President George Bush, knew about the fratricide and how they tried to keep it under wraps.
Probably most disgusting was that Tillman was afraid that if he was killed that the military may try to use his death for their own benefit, so he signed documents stating that he did *not* want a military funeral if he was killed in battle. He actually snuck a copy of the document and sent it to his wife Marie just in case it happened. When he was killed, 2 days later the Army sent two of their personnel to try and see if his wife wanted that military funeral (which I would imagine is illegal since Tillman himself signed the documents saying he didn not want a military funeral).
So I contemplated reviewing the movie because I felt that Tillman and his family had been used enough. He seemed like a guy that shyed away from the awards and accolades in life because he didn't want people to think that he thought he was better than them. Discussing it further here seemed to only further something he didn't want.
But, I came to grips that the documentary was really about the Tillman family wanting to tell their side of the story. That they were not blindly looking for vengeance in their son's death. That his death was due to extremely reckless acts instead of 'the heat of battle.' And just how much they were lied to and used to the point that you can easily see how they would start to not trust anything the government told them.
Pat Tillman, by all accounts, appeared to be a brutally honest person. And the documentary is not about being anti-government or anti-America or even anti-war. It's about the Tillman family telling the story they want you to hear...the truth.
3JACK
I first came across Pat Tillman well before he joined the Army Rangers. I used to be a big fan of NFL writer 'Dr. Z' Paul Zimmerman and he had selected Tillman to his All-Pro team. I hadn't really heard that much about Tillman and soon discovered that he was not your average football player and really not your average person. There was large part of a true 'renaissance man' in him in a day and age when athletes are more worried about what touchdown celebration they are going to use and what their reality TV show is going to be like.
In a sense, I was not all that shocked when Tillman announced that he was going to give up his contract to join the Army Rangers. Certainly, it was a surprise, but not a complete and utter shock. For me, that was saved for when he killed.
This documentary is a great documentary. However, it also sucked the life out of me as well. You start to see that Pat Tillman and his family were used as badly as a somebody can use another human being (much less an entire family). And what was worse is the sheer amount of people, regardless of their stance on the war or their political affiliations, that were/are in on the using and abusing of Tillman and his family.
Even the statute of Tillman outside the university of Phoenix Stadium resonates that to a degree with them carefully sculpting a statue with Nike cleats on it.
I doubt any viewer would expect otherwise, but for fair warning...this is not a feel good story by any means. IMO, it's a story of how selfish our society can be. If you think about it, all Pat Tillman seemed to want was to go find Bin Laden and bring him to justice and to not have any preferential treatment or notoriety of him joining the Rangers. Something that the military does with every solider...but they couldn't even give him that.
The documentary itself starts off with the intial aftermath with his death. Then it goes into his childhood, his family and career. Then his decision to join the Army and then leading up to his death and coverup beyond it.
My experience from this is that it was all very ambiguous in nature. The circumstances of his death didn't make a lot of sense. Particularly the award of the Silver Star. My grandfather was awarded the Silver Star and Bronze Star in World War II. He probably could've been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for what he did, but as he once told my dad he didn't want it because 'all of those guys are dead' (which isn't exactly true, but most of them wind up dead).
It's not an attempt to nitpick or complain, but it's just that when I had heard that Tillman was awarded the Silver Star, it just seemed like he had not earned it like men such as my grandfather did. And as the movie shows, Pat's father thought the same thing as well.
From there, it seemed that the message from the media was that the Tillman family was immediately outraged by his killing and immediately were looking for justice and that they believed that their son had been assassinated and would not give up until their son's killers were brought to justice.
But, that was far from the case. You'll see things like the Tillman's originally believing that their son was killed in combat until a fellow solider in his platoon told them otherwise. And then the massive coverup and how it was pretty obvious that the entire chain of command, up to the former President George Bush, knew about the fratricide and how they tried to keep it under wraps.
Probably most disgusting was that Tillman was afraid that if he was killed that the military may try to use his death for their own benefit, so he signed documents stating that he did *not* want a military funeral if he was killed in battle. He actually snuck a copy of the document and sent it to his wife Marie just in case it happened. When he was killed, 2 days later the Army sent two of their personnel to try and see if his wife wanted that military funeral (which I would imagine is illegal since Tillman himself signed the documents saying he didn not want a military funeral).
So I contemplated reviewing the movie because I felt that Tillman and his family had been used enough. He seemed like a guy that shyed away from the awards and accolades in life because he didn't want people to think that he thought he was better than them. Discussing it further here seemed to only further something he didn't want.
But, I came to grips that the documentary was really about the Tillman family wanting to tell their side of the story. That they were not blindly looking for vengeance in their son's death. That his death was due to extremely reckless acts instead of 'the heat of battle.' And just how much they were lied to and used to the point that you can easily see how they would start to not trust anything the government told them.
Pat Tillman, by all accounts, appeared to be a brutally honest person. And the documentary is not about being anti-government or anti-America or even anti-war. It's about the Tillman family telling the story they want you to hear...the truth.
3JACK
