Los ataques con ántrax

No pun intended - this is not about the Anthrax itself, but what or rather how the documentary is done. Mixing documentary and re-enacted events. With Clark Gregg of all people - I reckon on purpose, because he is quite likeable and not as shady (potentially?) as the character he is supposed to portray.

That mixed bags of goods ... well I am not sure it will work for most people watching this. The scenes that are being redone for dramatic effect ... well they don't entirely work. My sense and my understanding of them. Seeing how people have rated, it seems that others do agree with me though.

Interestingly done, but there are way better documentaries out there, you can spend your time with ... just saying.

This documentary does a decent job capturing the chaos and uncertainty of the weeks after 9/11 when America was besieged by Anthrax-laced mailings. These mailings resulted in only five deaths, but caused an untold level of fear. The film does a good job overviewing the lengthy and expensive FBI investigation into the case. Having lived through that era as a teenager it was interesting to watch this film as a piece of history now that we are over 20 years removed from the attacks. From the science of the pure anthrax spores to the cryptic notes included with the anthrax to the red herrings and missteps along the way, the film manages to cover an enormous amount of information in less than two hours. The film is a mix of news reel footage, interviews with those involved in the case, and re-enactments of key interactions with the main suspect. Clark Gregg of Marvel fame portrays Dr. Bruce Ivins who after a years long investigation was identified by the FBI as the perpetrator. Gregg gave a good performance. I don't normally like re-enactments in documentaries, but these scenes were written based directly on FBI interview notes of their conversations with Ivins as well as Ivins' own emails and writings. This gave the re-enactments a grounded and real feel. Overall this is an informative and easy to digest documentary. However, even after watching it, the viewer may feel less than convinced that the FBI got there man.

This documentary gives a decent overview of the case but should be supplemented with further reading if you want the full story. A bright spot was the focus on the postal employees and others effected by the attacks. The dive into reasoning and other important detail was kind of glanced over and condensed to a small footnote at the end. Again supplementing with further reading can flesh out the nitty gritty. Would have liked to see a deeper look into Dr Ivins possible motive that was only mentioned at the end. I would have also liked a closer look at the fbi investigation and a bit more of an explanation as to why the samples were destroyed. I assume it's a classic case of "we got our guy so let's close this book before more questions come up" but we will never know.

I think everyone on the planet will remember the events of September 11th, but not everyone will remember these events, in the wake of the terrorist attacks, this felt like another.

It's a pretty interesting documentary, it's made a little differently, it features some interesting footage, some intriguing interviews, and some less than successful dramatisation scenes.

It's watchable, if a little long, I think instead of being 95 minutes long, it could have been 60, at times it did drag.

Quite informative, I had no idea what anthrax was essentially, and how it behaved, I just assumed it was a chemical weapon, so I learned a little.

It was quite shocking to see that The Postal Centre was kept open, actually pretty sickening, contrast that to The Govern building, the thought of it stuck in the back of my throat,

7/10.

I really don't like documentaries that are actually just dramatized reenactments of the events, and prefer investigative documentaries that rely solely on actual footage, audio and other media involving the event. This documentary tries to straddle both, but unfortunately tries to derive way too much substance from the re-enactment portion. Most of this has to do with one of the FBI's suspects, and at that point in the film the production really goes off the rails into being primarily an over-acted, dramatized re-enactment. I think they felt this was really necessary to better highlight the reasons why the FBI suspected this person, maybe feeling that simple narration of transcripts might have been too boring. However, as with all re-enactments, you then run into scenes like a deposition hearing between the FBI and the suspect that are so dramatized you don't know what was actually said and what was part of the script the production company provided.

I would have preferred if it had been a purely factual documentary, or at least if Netflix had made it more clear that it was so largely re-enacted so I could avoid it all together.