Attentats de Londres: La terreur et la traque

The documentary was fine, not super compelling but generally interesting if not bland.

It is pitiful to watch the relative of the man who was shot by the police. She says the police lied lied lied lied lied, but the story that the suspect jumped over the turnstiles was perpetrated by the public, not by the police. So perhaps you are the liar ma'am.

It is so easy to criticize the police in any situation. In fact the police can almost never win. If you don't do enough, citizens are dying due to terrorist attacks. If you do too much, an innocent life may be taken by accident. You must execute your job with absolute perfection, and then perhaps 25% of the people will think that you did it correctly.

This documentary highlights that people are unbelievably unrealistic and ignorant. In the vast majority of cases, the police are trying their best to do the job and you couldn't do any better.

ABOUT MY REVIEWS:

I do not include a synopsis of the film/show -- you can get that anywhere and that does not constitute a meaningful review -- but rather my thoughts and feelings on the film that hopefully will be informative to you in deciding whether to invest 90-180 minutes of your life on it.

My scale: 1-5 decreasing degrees of "terrible", with 5 being "mediocre" 6- OK. Generally held my interest OR had reasonable cast and/or cinematography, might watch it again 7 - Good. My default rating for a movie I liked enough to watch again, but didn't rise to the upper echelons 8- Very good. Would watch again and recommend to others 9- Outstanding. Would watch over and over; top 10% of my ratings 10 - A classic. (Less than 2% receive this rating). For Lifetime Movies for Chicks (LMFC), drop the above scale by 3 notches. A 6 is excellent and 7 almost unattainable. Hi.

Im an American. I was 10 when 9/11 happened so ive seen plenty of documentaries about it over the decades. So I was excited to see someone had made a proper 7/7 documentary. A terrorist attack that seems to have been largely forgotten as a result of more recent ISIS attacks in Europe with significantly higher casualties. But as you will see in the documentary, it goes deeper than just 4 Jihadists on 7/7 who blew themselves up, and id say, for the most part. They did a great job portraying it.

With footage most of us likely have never seen before, interviews with high ranking police, intelligence operatives, and the warmonger Tony Blair himself, we get an interesting comprehensive look at what happened. Though I personally would not have structured it the way it was, possibly due to the lack of footage (unlike 9/11), this is how the had to do it, and thats ok because it was compelling to watch the scenes unfold. However, while I watched on with interest into the subsequent forensics investigation and later-on failed attack and manhunt, I was displeased with something thats been creeping in to these documentaries as of late. The "poor me, Muslim pity party".

Right in the middle of sections discussing forensics, police investigations, internal discussions at MI-5. We get stopped, jarringly by "human rights activists" and other of that ilk. And they go on and on and on about how THEY were persecuted, not the 50+ people heinously murdered by true Muslims, BUT THEM, apparently 50+ dead isn't enough right? We have to be victims too. I was old enough to clearly remember 9/11, I remember the justifiable backlash against Muslims. When we have a plethora of dead people, I and very few other people want to hear about how its not real Islam, because it is, ive studied it, ive fought it. People complaining about being searched by police. Of course you are, when a white Catholic does the same, go ahead and search me. Get out of here with that nonsense and get back to the true crime investigation I came here for. Not a slew of people pretending that what happened isnt actually true textbook Islam justified by their "Holy" texts.

So while one can just skip through those stupid interviews, the rest is fantastic and another example of how Netflix still can produce good documentaries despite a lull in quality as of late, this one stands above most of the recent Netflix documentaries.

It seems today's storytellers really have a difficult time conveying time frame and accepting that time changes. What is acceptable today will not be acceptable sometime in the very near future. Whilst it does use a lot of real footage and photos, and talks with a few survivors, it does not go far enough. It is disjointed at times and doesn't speak to enough survivors. When a very specific demographic succeeds in blowing up a lot of places in the biggest International city on the planet, you do not go around looking for people that are opposite of said demographic; and we don't want to be preached to about it since we lived through it. If a 5'11 140 lb male 20 - 30 yr old is the perp/suspect, you don't target a 4' 200 lb 70 year old female. To find fault with investigators 20 years after the fact is Asinine. To even bring it up just goes to show that in 2025 people care more about optics than actually saving people's lives; and to preach about how awful it was that police targeted a specific demographic now is a slap in the face to the survivors and victim's family members; and severely minimises the true fear of a population of over 8 million AT THE TIME. I would love to see how these hypocrites would react if they actually lived through an attack on their family member, or themselves. Is it absolutely tragic that Jean Charles de Menezes was killed - yes- AND it's really easy to armchair quarterback that in 2025. The jacka$$e$ that did this were a very specific demographic. That is a fact. You cannot go searching for the opposite and expect to get the criminals. Plus the makers of this series completely forget that Londoners live with bomb attacks - for decades and generations. There was WWI, the Troubles started in 1920, WWII, the Troubles continuing until 2008, and terror attacks in recent years. This series was somehow uploaded out of sequence, so episode three is actually episode four, and episode 4 is actually episode three, so I had to watch it twice. It is appalling and quite astounding that these four idiots only received a minimum 40. What's even more disturbing is that you cannot find any information at all about them. Just like the idiots that attacked NYC. It tells me that England, like the US, has used these idiots to catch bigger fish. Abu Hamza, which radicalised these idiots at least got a life sentence in NY. These four should have been displayed at Traitor's Gate in 2005.

This series is well done, but also paints a very very poor picture of Law Enforcement and Counterterrorism in London. These attacks were 4 years after 9/11, and one would think that major cities all over the world would look at the chaos that occurred and fix their response. One would be wrong. Law Enforcement as well as other first responders literally had no idea what to do. Again this is 4 YEARS, not days, not months, or weeks after 9/11 and they never decided to come up with and carry out training for all possible attacks. If Rick Rescorla could figure out how to create training scenarios for Morgan Stanley in the South Tower of the World Trade Center, then certainly London could run drills in their city. And it's the same BS we in America got :"Oh we had alQueda on a list, we just chose to ignore it" or "Well we really didn't think they were going to do anything because there was "no chatter" If that helps the unintelligence community sleep better at night........ But remember this, you all eventually get exposed for all the lies you tell.

So wrong of Netflix to use this calamity to push an anti police narrative. Yes, an innocent person was killed by mistake but those truly responsible for this are the bombers who created the environment and, going further, the political class and elites who allowed people to come to the UK who hate it and want to destroy it.

The police do a very difficult job and should not be prosecuted for mistakes. That would have a chilling effect as it would mean few would want to be police. This suits some activists who hate the police and romanticize anarchy and Netflix has played into these radicals' hands.

The bombers killed over 50 innocent people yet at the end all the director can do is blame MI5 for not stopping it?! Are you serious? What about the bombers themselves, their families, Pakistan who seems to have trained them, governments who have allowed them to enter the UK and the Islamic religion and preachers who encouraged them?? Why aren't these all blamed as well. In some ways, I think they are much more culpable than MI5.

Please let's start to lay blame where blame is due and dispense with political narratives that end up blaming the victims.