Untold: The Murder of Air McNair

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.

The first 50%(at least) of this documentary is coach Jim Fischer's journey (along with the Houston Oilers) to Nashville Tennessee and the now Titans run to the Super Bowl following the 1999 season. Taking second fiddle but also included is Air playing for HBCU Alcorn State University - this I believe OK to be included - in build up to the homicide, but not so much of the rest.

So, eventually the producers get to the murder of McNair. And then the second decedent at the scene. And it is "revealed" the second dead person is married Air's girlfriend/mistress 18 yo Sahel 'Jenni' Kazemi and she the perpetrator of murder suicide. It takes a while to reach this point, with repetitive archival footage of newscasters getting the viewer here.

Once we get to this determination by the police,no forensic evidence is offered to back it up. The only reason presented is a few days before the deaths, Jenni is busted for DWI and is unhappy with Air's tardiness in bailing her out.

After the producers accept the conclusion of murder/suicide, they touch on two possible other scenarios, but don't follow up, and stay with what seemingly less than competent Nashville PD's version of things.

Conclusion: when the murder is finally presented, it is a very weak true crime drama.

I cannot believe they called this a documentary. I was very upset that they did not give full credence to this person in this documentary as the explanation to the murder was very convoluted and just jointed and while I understand to pronounce his amazing football career go ahead and do that but do it in an organized fashion the whole documentary made no sense. Poorly done. I love most documentaries for the store they tell even if they are not done perfectly this was not one of them. It was also frustrating that you could barely understand why anyone was just saying I don't know if it was an editing issue or watt but come on filmmakers can do better.

I literally thought I'd missed something when the documentary ended. I was expecting additional episodes that would delve deeper into the other suspects and explain some of the twists and turns in the story. It was all surface. Netflix usually has great documentaries. I normally Google the person/people the documetary is about, if I am not familiar with them, in order to know who the key players are just in case the documentary doesnt. Netflix did a decent job at that, so I just changed my rating from one star to two stars. I'm glad I didn't Google him, as I would've learned everything the documentary was about beforehand and wouldve have been even more disappointed as I had wasted my time watching it. Perhaps this was created during the Writers Guild strike 😂

Don't waste your time. It was awful. They tried to run the story of a football player along side a murder and ended up missing the story completely. Ended up with far more questions than answers and no actual answer of what really happened. Pointless. Could have been really good but there wasn't enough sustenance at all. More like a vague football documentary. An hour of my life I will never get back. There are far more and far better documentaries out there and done much better too. If you want to be left guessing, watch it, but you'll be guessing for all the wrong reasons. You don't get an answer.