Reviews for "The Tillman Story," which opens in San Diego theaters tomorrow (Sept. 3), are in, and they are mostly raves. Rolling Stone calls it "a triumphant success" while Men's Journal calls it "nothing short of masterful." I included one negative review for equal time, but it was hard to find.
"The Tillman Story" is the highly anticipated account of the life, and death, of Pat Tillman, who quit the National Football League during the height of his professional football career in the wake of 9/11 to join the Army Rangers, turning down a multimillion-dollar contract from the Arizona Cardinals. After his death, he received a Silver Star for valor.
However, the filmmakers argue and show convincing evidence that the military concocted a bogus account of his death, saying he'd saved the lives of fellow soldiers during a mountain ambush by the Taliban during his second tour of Afghanistan. Eventually, thanks to the persistence of Tillman's strong-willed, courageous family, who demanded to know the truth, the cover-up was exposed and the real story came out.
Tillman was actually the tragic victim of so-called friendly fire. He was killed accidentally by his own unit. But given Tillman's celebrity status as an NFL star, a fictional account of his death during a fierce firefight with the Taliban was created and used by the government presumably to avoid an inquiry and to elicit support for the war. Tillman, who was 27, remains an American hero to those who knew him.
Here's a list of five reviews:
1) New York Daily News - Timeless documentary that hits on all cylinders ' politically, pop-culturally and, most important, square in the gut.
2) Los Angeles Times - Compelling. "The Tillman Story" is a story that won't go away, won't leave you alone, won't let you feel at ease. Intensely dramatic, filled with elevated heroism, crass self-interest and blatant stupidity, it's a paradigmatic narrative of our tendentious, turbulent times.
3) Andrew Breitbart's Blog Hollywood - Anti-Bush conspiracy just doesn't add up. Partisan filmmaker attempts to prop up the absurd anti-Bush conspiracy theory that it wasn't the ever-reliable incompetence of government bureaucracy that caused what was probably the second worst day in this family's life ' the day they were told Tillman had been killed in a friendly fire incident, but rather a sinister plot hatched by the Administration and the Pentagon to use Tillman's death as a flag-waving symbol to bolster military recruitment and support for the war.
