Untold: The Murder of Air McNair

Netflix and their "Untold" series are rolling out a few of their famed sports documentaries and one in particular caught my eye. "Untold: The Murder Of Air McNair", a documentary about Steve McNair being murdered in cold blood by his 20-year-old mistress. My favorite quarterback of all time? Yeah, I was excited to see what new information they were going to release and what they were going to highlight.

I mean it's been 15 years since McNair was killed on 4th of July in 2009 and they drop this on us out of nowhere, surely there has to be some new information here right? Not even close. This documentary was a complete waste of an hour. 0 new information presented an a just a waste of time. Kind of fitting that these Netflix sports docs are falling flat on their face. Swamp Kings was awful, the Johnny Manziel one was not done great at all, and this one now joins the others as time you'll never get back.

Now it wasn't all bad, we got some good quotes and stories from McNair's former coach, Jeff Fisher. My guy is sitting cool guy style in a leather chair just spitting some great stories. I did enjoy hearing from him, I'd have loved another hour of that. But other than that, there's nothing too good. Interviews with his friends and a former player, his old coach, some police and that is it. The doc bounces back and forth between his playing career and the timeline and events of the murder. But they just continue to go over things that we've already been told. 0 new redeeming qualities about this film.

Maybe the wildest part of the whole documentary was the interview with the mistress' ex-boyfriend. They basically made him relive the time his girlfriend broke up with him and started dating his favorite football player of all time while they still shared a lease. I mean talk about rubbing someones nose in it.

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.

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.

Don't waste your time. It was awful. They tried to run the story of a football player along side a murder and ended up missing the story completely. Ended up with far more questions than answers and no actual answer of what really happened. Pointless. Could have been really good but there wasn't enough sustenance at all. More like a vague football documentary. An hour of my life I will never get back. There are far more and far better documentaries out there and done much better too. If you want to be left guessing, watch it, but you'll be guessing for all the wrong reasons. You don't get an answer.

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.