Tillman Story - C

In theaters. Rated R, 94 minutes. Trailer.

What a waste. This documentary could have been really good, but director Amir Bar-Lev could not structure the story correctly. Pat Tillman was an eccentric Californian atheist pro football player that quit the NFL to join the Army in the Winter of 2002. After his death in Afghanistan, the Army covered up the actual facts of his combat death (which was by friendly fire in a non-combat situation) and told the family and the nation that he was killed by an al quaeda ambush. Tillman's contradictions are interesting and so is the Army's deception. But Bar-Lev chooses to make the movie as uninteresting as possible. Click below for more on TS:

I thought I was in for an annoying but interesting anti-Bush documentary, but the film starts very slowly with Pat's background. No one interviewed does a good job describing Pat, who nevertheless seemed like a fascinating guy. His family seem like Californian weirdo's on a grief mission that is basically pointless. The underlying premise of the film is that any inconsistency in the Army's account of his death is a tantamount to the failure to find WMD's in Iraq - this renders the whole film a little overdramatic in addition to being boring.

Bar-Lev should've told the story of who Pat was better, and then switched to the differing accounts of Tillman's demise. The how and why of the Army's deception should have been more interesting than it was, but it got lost in the presentation. The film is also weakened by a total lack of any other perspective - surely someone in the Army could present a plausible explanation - whether true or not. Josh Brolin provides good narration.

Skip it.