What is most interesting about The Tillman Story is what it leaves unsaid about Pat Tillman, his death, and the cover-up afterwards. The film doesn't communicate anything about the man a viewer wouldn't know from watching a few news clips after Tillman's 2004 killing – he was a jock "who read Emerson and Chomsky" as well as the Book of Mormon. The Story is thoroughly hagiographic in its treatment of Tillman's character, and assures us the man was sexually faithful to his childhood sweetheart as well as true in his commitment to a military which would in life and death betray him. From the film Tillman is shown to be without foible except that he and his brothers say "f*cking" a lot. Family, friends, fellow soldiers have ought but good to say of the man. Uninterviewed are the Rangers who shot him, or any soldiers who might have held Tillman in anything less than awestruck admiration – was there no one he offended, no one in his platoon who held a grudge? As his buddies gunned him down he's reported to have repeatedly protested "I'm Pat f*cking Tillman" presumedly not as an anonymous Joe Dokes' dying assertion of identity, but rather claiming the shelter of an star. The effect of this on his teammates is unexplored by the film.
What the movie very successfully shows are family and colleagues who are without language to investigate or express their attachment to icons. We are repeatedly shown images of fallen Tillman's red football jersey, a relic displayed in various sizes to reverential audiences. Here the film touches on the sports warrior metaphor but chooses to leave it unexamined. Before going into the military Tillman is said to have spent several hours exploring his decision with his football coach, who huskily asserts that to Pat words like honor, respect, and commitment were "not just adjectives." The intent here is apparently to impart depth of import, to leave the viewer with some enhanced appreciation of Tillman's character, but instead of nodding in reverence to a dead hero this viewer found himself exclaiming reflexively that the words are in fact not adjectives, they are nouns. Tillman Sr., an attorney, closes a brief contesting the government's verdict on his son's death with this summation: "F*ck you, and yours." Richard Tillman's funerary oration is comprised of telling an audience his beloved brother Pat is "f*cking dead."
The Tillman Story shows Pat Tillman as a hero for a people without words, who worshipped Pat because besides being able to run down a field and knock a man over he also "read Chomsky." What Chomsky might have to say about language, or Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Pat Tillman, is unfortunately unexplored by the film.
What the movie very successfully shows are family and colleagues who are without language to investigate or express their attachment to icons. We are repeatedly shown images of fallen Tillman's red football jersey, a relic displayed in various sizes to reverential audiences. Here the film touches on the sports warrior metaphor but chooses to leave it unexamined. Before going into the military Tillman is said to have spent several hours exploring his decision with his football coach, who huskily asserts that to Pat words like honor, respect, and commitment were "not just adjectives." The intent here is apparently to impart depth of import, to leave the viewer with some enhanced appreciation of Tillman's character, but instead of nodding in reverence to a dead hero this viewer found himself exclaiming reflexively that the words are in fact not adjectives, they are nouns. Tillman Sr., an attorney, closes a brief contesting the government's verdict on his son's death with this summation: "F*ck you, and yours." Richard Tillman's funerary oration is comprised of telling an audience his beloved brother Pat is "f*cking dead."
The Tillman Story shows Pat Tillman as a hero for a people without words, who worshipped Pat because besides being able to run down a field and knock a man over he also "read Chomsky." What Chomsky might have to say about language, or Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Pat Tillman, is unfortunately unexplored by the film.