Rehash of the shameful facts of how Pat Tillman, Jr., the Arizona Cardinal who set aside a professional football career to enlist in the Army post-9/11, had his head shot off by friendly fire in Afghanistan, how the circumstances of his death were initially covered up behind a whole-cloth scenario of heroism under enemy attack, how this version of events was played up in the news media exactly as it was handed to them, how Tillman’s death altogether got co-opted by special interests (his Cardinal jersey number 40 marketed with the name “TILLMAN” supplanted by “HERO”), not the least of which interests were to turn him into a propaganda tool for the military, and how bit by bit, under the unrelenting, the authentically heroic, efforts of his mother and father, the truth came out. These facts were of course already well known as far as we will ever know and understand them (how did the Army or the higher-ups ever think they could get away with the initial fabrication?), but the account of filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev is exceptionally well organized and detailed, even down to some official investigative footage of the actual scene of the crime, or, strictly speaking, the accident; and the talking-heads testimony, no matter how otherwise uncinematic, puts human faces on Tillman’s family and his comrades-in-arms. The formulaic documentary technique, workmanlike at best, doesn’t prevent the infuriating story from coming through, taking shape in the end as an impassioned argument for complexity and ambiguity, against simplification and, if you will, patness. (2010) — Duncan Shepherd
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