Available on Netflix now is ‘The Tillman Story’, the documentary about the real (and not real) story of the death of former NFL star Pat Tillman. In my opinion it’s not the best documentary that covers our presence in Afghanistan (that would be Restrepo) but it’s an interesting film nonetheless.

For those unfamiliar, Pat Tillman was a somewhat well known football player, first at Arizona State and then with the Arizona Cardinals, who after the events of 9/11, chose to leave behind his NFL contract and go into the Armed Forces.  His career change and subsequent death both became national headlines and turned Tillman, briefly, into the ultimate American hero.

What the documentary goes into (in this is the only spoiler I’ll put out) is that Tillman sensed that this might happen if he died on the battlefield, and tried to make arrangements to prevent it.  After we get the full backstory of the Tillman family, the film breaks into two parts: one is how the U.S. government more or less tried to ‘strongarm’ Tillman’s family into having the pomp and circumstance funeral he made it clear he didn’t want.  The second part of the film deals with the cover up of when the powers that be knew that Tillman was killed by friendly fire.  It’s not really shocking if you’re at all aware of the government’s ability to protect their own necks, but it doesn’t make it any less infuriating and disappointing.

But hopefully I haven’t given the whole thing away, I encourage you to check it out if you haven’t seen it.