Untold: The Murder of Air McNair

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.

So I am be a little late to this because I do not watch football and I am not much of a athlete so I do not know who Steve McNair was until I watched this documentary last night. I thought it was a really good documentary, especially if you did not know the story, as I did not. Steve was a very good quarterback with a very sharp mind in the football world. He was great at him prime and seemed to be very loved by the fans. But unfortunately his life was cut tragically short when he was murdered in 1999. Out of respect for his family, I will not voice my opinion on what happened because that's not my place. I think this is a very well put together documentary. The only thing I would say is there is maybe to much time spent on the game of football and less on the actual Murder investigation.

I cannot believe they called this a documentary. I was very upset that they did not give full credence to this person in this documentary as the explanation to the murder was very convoluted and just jointed and while I understand to pronounce his amazing football career go ahead and do that but do it in an organized fashion the whole documentary made no sense. Poorly done. I love most documentaries for the store they tell even if they are not done perfectly this was not one of them. It was also frustrating that you could barely understand why anyone was just saying I don't know if it was an editing issue or watt but come on filmmakers can do better.

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.

As "Untold: The Murder of Air McNair" (2024 release; 58 min.) opens, it is "July 4, 2009" and Robert Gaddy, longtime friend of Titans QB Steve McNair, calls 911 in distress upon finding 2 dead bodies at McNair's apartment in Nashville. We then go back in time to 1995 when Jeff Fisher, interim head Coach of the Houston Oilers, is named head coach period, and Steve McNair is drafted in the first round of the NFL draft by Houston. At this point we are less than 10 minutes into the documentary.

Couple of comments: of course I remembered that McNair was killed in 2009 but I didn't remember the exact circumstances of this horrible event. This documentary aims to dig into those exact circumstances. At net even an hour of running time, this felt less like an in-depth assessment of a tragic, and more like a sensational paparazzi piece. In this particular piece, it turns out that Jeff Fisher is one of the most pivotal talking heads. Bottom line: this could've been a truly interesting review of Steve McNair's life, but instead we receive something that is interested only in the sensational headlines, and not the deeper background.

"Untold: The Murder of Air McNair" recently started streaming on Netflix, and Netflix recommended it to me based on my viewing habits. If you are a fan of the NFL or a fan of true crime, I'd readily suggest you check this out, with tempered expectations, and draw your own conclusion.