Untold: Review of The Murder of Air McNair – save yourself an hour and google it | Documentary

TThe Netflix documentary series “Untold” looks at dark moments in sport: controversy, failure, cheating and injustice. The series has a long track record of finding fascinating stories. The latest episode, “The Murder of Air McNair,” looks at the suspicious death of an American football star. That sounds promising – but if there is new ground to be broken here, “Untold” finds none.

The basic test for an hour-long documentary is whether it can provide a more insightful summary of events than the viewer could find in 10 minutes on Google. “Untold” just barely meets that low hurdle.

It is largely a retelling of the core facts. In 2009, former quarterback Steve “Air” McNair, 36, was found dead in an apartment in Nashville, Tennessee. He had been shot four times. Next to him lay the body of his 20-year-old girlfriend, Sahel Kazemi, who had been killed by a single gunshot wound to the head.

Police interviewed McNair's acquaintances Wayne Neely, who called 911 but left the scene before police arrived, and Robert Gaddy, who had recently argued with McNair over money related to a joint business venture. They also spoke with Kazemi's ex-boyfriend Kenneth Norfleet and Adrian Gilliam, a felon who admitted to selling Kazemi the murder weapon. Gilliam had claimed not to know her, but it emerged that he had exchanged dozens of calls and messages with Kazemi in the weeks before her death.

Ultimately, police concluded the tragedy was a murder-suicide. Kazemi had financial and mental health problems and may have been angry when she discovered McNair was seeing other women. Critics of the investigation say more attention should have been paid to other suspects.

There's not much else to say about the case. We see footage of police interviews that give nothing away, see photos of the crime scene — as well as gruesome footage of the bloody gun — and hear brief recollections from the local police department's investigating officer. Vincent Hill, a private investigator who has led calls for the case to be reopened and has written books about McNair's death, is interviewed, but only appears in the final 10 minutes of the show, as his opinion doesn't take long to be expressed. He believes Gilliam should have been the prime suspect, and in 2010 he tried to convince a grand jury to reopen the case with a 32-page dossier. They refused due to a lack of evidence. Gilliam declined to be interviewed for the show.

Untold at least does a brisk job of examining the frustrating murder case and also takes on the task of summarizing McNair's career. But again, the subject matter is not remarkable enough. McNair was a good football player who shunned publicity and was team-oriented. He was capable of making spectacular long passes, but was also known for running the ball, a practice some famous NFL quarterbacks shy away from because of the risk of injury.

In the 1999 season, he led the underdog Tennessee Titans to the Super Bowl against the St. Louis Rams, a classic game in which McNair planned a comeback that narrowly missed success when wide receiver Kevin Dyson, who had received the ball from McNair, was tackled at the one-yard line as time expired and desperately tried with his arm outstretched to get the ball into the end zone and score the equalizer.

The 2000 Super Bowl made McNair a star. The game was so famous that it was mentioned in the movie Castaway: When Helen Hunt tells Tom Hanks what happened while he was stranded on an island, she also mentions that the Titans “almost won.”

Other than that, there's not much to say about McNair's athletic history. He was very good. He was widely respected. He had a long and successful career at a time when black quarterbacks were rarer than they are today. But… that's about it.

The best moment of the show is a small but moving revelation. After the final whistle of the Super Bowl, Titans coach Jeff Fisher spoke into McNair's ear as he knelt on the field in despair at having so narrowly missed out on winning his sport's greatest prize. That day, Fisher refused to tell reporters what the two men had said. Now he admits that they simply told each other that they loved each other.

McNair's colleagues have nothing but good things to say about him. One former teammate expressed his wish that his friend should be remembered for his playing, not his death. That's an admirable goal, but Untold didn't help matters.