Untold: The Murder of Air McNair

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.

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.

As "Untold: The Murder of Air McNair" (2024 release; 58 min.) opens, it is "July 4, 2009" and Robert Gaddy, longtime friend of Titans QB Steve McNair, calls 911 in distress upon finding 2 dead bodies at McNair's apartment in Nashville. We then go back in time to 1995 when Jeff Fisher, interim head Coach of the Houston Oilers, is named head coach period, and Steve McNair is drafted in the first round of the NFL draft by Houston. At this point we are less than 10 minutes into the documentary.

Couple of comments: of course I remembered that McNair was killed in 2009 but I didn't remember the exact circumstances of this horrible event. This documentary aims to dig into those exact circumstances. At net even an hour of running time, this felt less like an in-depth assessment of a tragic, and more like a sensational paparazzi piece. In this particular piece, it turns out that Jeff Fisher is one of the most pivotal talking heads. Bottom line: this could've been a truly interesting review of Steve McNair's life, but instead we receive something that is interested only in the sensational headlines, and not the deeper background.

"Untold: The Murder of Air McNair" recently started streaming on Netflix, and Netflix recommended it to me based on my viewing habits. If you are a fan of the NFL or a fan of true crime, I'd readily suggest you check this out, with tempered expectations, and draw your own conclusion.

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.

So I am be a little late to this because I do not watch football and I am not much of a athlete so I do not know who Steve McNair was until I watched this documentary last night. I thought it was a really good documentary, especially if you did not know the story, as I did not. Steve was a very good quarterback with a very sharp mind in the football world. He was great at him prime and seemed to be very loved by the fans. But unfortunately his life was cut tragically short when he was murdered in 1999. Out of respect for his family, I will not voice my opinion on what happened because that's not my place. I think this is a very well put together documentary. The only thing I would say is there is maybe to much time spent on the game of football and less on the actual Murder investigation.