Documentary offers honest look at ‘Tillman Story’ - Entertainment, Movies - Navy Times

Documentary offers honest look at ‘Tillman Story’

Pat Tillman was, by all accounts, a complex person.

Smart, athletic and unconventional, the former Arizona State University football star famously quit the Arizona Cardinals and walked away from millions of dollars to enlist in the U.S. Army not long after 9/11. He was killed in Afghanistan in 2004, shot by his fellow troops — information that the Army withheld, instead creating a story that Tillman died a death more akin to something out of a John Wayne movie, saving his troops while heroically fighting off the enemy. Only after years of dogged work by Tillman’s family (and reporters) would the truth come to light.

That much we know already. The value of “The Tillman Story,” Amir Bar-Lev’s outstanding documentary not just about Tillman’s death but about Tillman himself, is in showing us what determination looks like, while making us consider the very nature of heroism.

We also learn more about Tillman’s growing disillusionment with the spread of war to Iraq, as well as his opportunity to walk away from the Army and rejoin professional football — an opportunity he declined, instead choosing to honor his commitment.

Watching the film, emotions range from sadness to frustration to out-and-out anger. This, truly, is the best we can do? Throwing up roadblocks in front of the truth, not trusting the American people to understand the nature of war and its costs, instead concocting hero stories to pacify us? Was Tillman’s sacrifice — walking away from a career young men dream of, eschewing any publicity, turning down any request for interviews — not inspiration enough by itself, without trumped-up stories meant to lionize his death? Of course it was. Despite Tillman’s posthumous Silver Star, Bar-Lev makes the case that he wasn’t a traditional war hero. He was something much more complicated than that, and no less a worthy man for it.

The hero that does emerge here is Tillman’s mother, Dannie. Her work to get at the truth is inspiring — and, like the rest of his family, she is offbeat enough to be endlessly entertaining. She and her former husband, Pat Sr., talk about the upbringing of their three sons; neighbors hilariously recall the language the boys used while growing up. (Were there no rules about the Tillman boys dropping F-bombs around the house? “Evidently not,” Dannie concludes.) Kevin Tillman enlisted alongside his brother. He was part of the mission in which Pat was killed, though he was not there at the time. He would find out about his brother’s death minutes afterwards, but not that Pat was a victim of friendly fire. In fact, members of Tillman’s troop were told to keep quiet about the circumstances, even when talking to the family.

The most moving part of the film is one soldier retelling how Kevin was informed of Pat’s death. Understandably upset, Kevin wanders around in a seeming daze before beginning to shout and scream. A medic walks up to him and says, simply, that he will need his weapon. The impact of the request — an order couched in compassion, really — is tremendous.

Bar-Lev follows the investigations through to congressional hearings, which result in lapses in memory on the part of most government witnesses, including then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Scapegoats would be found, but real answers would not: It’s still not known who shot Tillman, and the truth likely will never come out.

What does come out in “The Tillman Story” is a portrait of a man and his family who do not fit into easy categories, but instead are true American originals, hewing to their own beliefs and values.

Tillman created a life worth celebrating, no matter how it ended. If only the Army had trusted us to celebrate it as he lived it, as well.

Rated R for language.