Untold: The Murder of Air McNair

The first 50%(at least) of this documentary is coach Jim Fischer's journey (along with the Houston Oilers) to Nashville Tennessee and the now Titans run to the Super Bowl following the 1999 season. Taking second fiddle but also included is Air playing for HBCU Alcorn State University - this I believe OK to be included - in build up to the homicide, but not so much of the rest.

So, eventually the producers get to the murder of McNair. And then the second decedent at the scene. And it is "revealed" the second dead person is married Air's girlfriend/mistress 18 yo Sahel 'Jenni' Kazemi and she the perpetrator of murder suicide. It takes a while to reach this point, with repetitive archival footage of newscasters getting the viewer here.

Once we get to this determination by the police,no forensic evidence is offered to back it up. The only reason presented is a few days before the deaths, Jenni is busted for DWI and is unhappy with Air's tardiness in bailing her out.

After the producers accept the conclusion of murder/suicide, they touch on two possible other scenarios, but don't follow up, and stay with what seemingly less than competent Nashville PD's version of things.

Conclusion: when the murder is finally presented, it is a very weak true crime drama.

Talented NFL Quarterback Steve McNair becomes a superstar, and comes very close to winning the superbowl. His life is cut short however, when he is killed in 2009.

I hate to jump on the bandwagon, but this wasn't a particularly good documentary, for such a big story, it's just so poorly assembled. It's almost chaotic, it jumps about from one thing to another, and the pacing is somehow frantic.

Documentaries should be factual and informative, there must be a temptation to sensationalise them, and this one is guilty of that, it's too glossy, too heavily produced. Those interviews, come on, they're like scenes from a cheesy movie.

It certainly shows that McNair had a great life, halfway through I felt like I was watching a show about a saint, in reality he was an incredibly talented young man, who enjoyed the spotlight, and probably had a lot of fun.

That ending though, come on!!!

4/10.

I literally thought I'd missed something when the documentary ended. I was expecting additional episodes that would delve deeper into the other suspects and explain some of the twists and turns in the story. It was all surface. Netflix usually has great documentaries. I normally Google the person/people the documetary is about, if I am not familiar with them, in order to know who the key players are just in case the documentary doesnt. Netflix did a decent job at that, so I just changed my rating from one star to two stars. I'm glad I didn't Google him, as I would've learned everything the documentary was about beforehand and wouldve have been even more disappointed as I had wasted my time watching it. Perhaps this was created during the Writers Guild strike 😂

It's a 1 hour review of his murder, the investigation, and the outcome. They do flash back to tell the story of his playing days which is important context for those who didn't know how big he was. Don't most documentaries give the background of the person who was murdered? The investigation was not complex and there really wasn't much more to be said. They tried to throw in a little drama at the end, but I don't think there is much merit to that. If people want more information about that drama I think they were expecting a much less straight forward case. Some murders are simple and don't need 3-4 episodes to explain.

While I understand Steve Mcnair's career as a footballer and the US having such an intense relationship with the game and its players, I found it to be extreme and excessive in terms of how much football is in this show. This is supposed to be a documentary that covers Steve McNair as a person who was killed. Football is just a part of who he was. But this whole documentary reduces him to a player in a team sport, it focuses on the team as a whole, the game, the moves, and about a hundred too many clips. We even start the first episode with way too much information on the backstory of the coach's career - why??

I know very little about who he was, the sort of person he aimed to be, the kind of father he was, did he volunteer in the community, did he donate to charity, did he have a favourite pastime, who was this man outside of "a great arm" and "ghetto fabulous" (this was seriously said by a commentator about McNair and his new team uniform, GHETTO FABULOUS, I damn well choked on my chicken wings).

There is little to nothing regarding the investigation, forensics, suspects, his abandoned family that he left for a "barely legal" child (this documentary did nothing for his image outside of football).

This felt like a poorly done introductory episode to a series that fell flat. Terrible work, don't waste your time.

I hope the victims are offered better coverage in another documentary sometime in the future. This was a slap in the faces to them both.

1/10.