The Tillman Story
Directed by Amir Bar-Lev (2010)
This movie follows the case of Pat Tillman, the NFL star who enlisted in the US Army after watching the coverage of the 9/11 Twin Tower attacks. This story was covered obsessively by the media a few years ago, but this movie does a great job at cutting through the propaganda and telling the real story (which is MUCH more dramatic!). Basically, Pat Tillman was idolized as a "hero" by both the army and the media when he decided to enlist. What a great story to get other young men and women to enlist, right? Wrong. As much as Fox News and the military painted an image of Tillman as the "All-American Hero", his family insists in this film that he was as flawed as any other human being. Despite his "jock" looks, he was actually very intelligent and informed on world issues. He was also disgusted by US foreign policy when he saw what was really happening in Afghanistan and Iraq. When he died in 2004 in combat, the military decided to take advantage of this tragedy for their own benefit. They told the media (and his family) that he died in a firefight with up to 20 Taliban combatants. The army even made the witnesses of his death keep quiet about the truth. What really happened is that he was killed in friendly fire by his own platoon who mistook him for the enemy. The story of how far the military and US government officials (as far up the chain as Rumsfeld himself) went to cover up the truth and the fact that they had completely fabricated the story of his death is the real heart of this documentary. This movie is excellent and does a better job of showing who Tillman really was then any statue or Fox News story.
The best line in the whole film is from Tillman's funeral when his brother says: "He's not with God. He's fucking dead." Those two short sentences really sum up the main message of this movie: war is gruesome and dirty and good looking, smart, football players can get their heads literally blown off by their own buddies. But since Lockheed Martin and US contractors make so much money off these wars in far away lands, they do not want you to know that. They would rather every dead soldier be glorified for "heroic" acts they did not even commit. Lies and coverups are no way to support our troops. The best way to support our troops is to send them all home.
My only complaint about this doc is that they barely mention that another man was killed in the same incident. He was an Afghan soldier from a group working with the US army to fight the Taliban. He was shot to pieces as well. It would have nice if the film at least mentioned his name. That is one of the main problems with the War on Terror. We always hear about the Canadians and Americans killed, but we rarely hear about our allies or civilians that suffer the same horrible deaths. They have families too and "died fighting for our freedom" as much as Tillman did. They deserve a bit more respect, and I think Tillman would agree with me if he was still around.
No comments:
Post a Comment