TNetflix’s documentary series Untold revisits dark moments in sports: controversy, failure, deceit and injustice. The series has a strong reputation for finding compelling stories. The latest episode, The Murder of Air McNair, investigates the suspicious death of an American football star, which sounds promising—but if there’s new ground to cover, Untold doesn’t find it.
The basic test for an hour-long documentary is whether it can provide a more insightful summary of events than a 10-minute Google search would give the viewer. Untold barely clears that low bar.
It’s mostly a retelling of the basic facts. In 2009, retired quarterback Steve “Air” McNair, 36, was found dead in a Nashville, Tennessee, apartment, shot four times. Next to him was the body of his 20-year-old girlfriend, Sahel Kazemi, killed by a single bullet to the head.
Police interviewed McNair’s acquaintances Wayne Neely, who had called 911 but left the scene before police arrived, and Robert Gaddy, who had recently had a dispute with McNair over money related to a joint business venture. They also spoke to Kazemi’s ex-boyfriend Kenneth Norfleet and to Adrian Gilliam, a felon who admitted to selling Kazemi the murder weapon. Gilliam had claimed not to know her, but it later turned out that he had exchanged dozens of phone calls and text messages with Kazemi in the weeks before her death.
Ultimately, police determined the tragedy was a murder-suicide. Kazemi had struggled with her finances and her mental health and, they said, may have been upset when she discovered McNair was seeing other women. Critics of the investigation say other suspects should have gotten more attention than they did.
There’s little more to say about the case. We see footage of police interrogations that reveal nothing, see crime scene photos — as well as gruesome images of the bloody gun — and hear brief recollections from the local police investigating officer. Vincent Hill, a private investigator who has led calls for a reinvestigation of the case and written books about McNair’s death, is interviewed. But he only appears in the last 10 minutes of the program, because his opinion is not long in coming. He believes Gilliam should have been the prime suspect and tried to convince a grand jury to reopen the case in 2010 with a 32-page dossier. They declined, citing a lack of evidence. Gilliam declined to be interviewed for the program.
Untold is at least quick in its examination of the frustrating murder case, since it also sets itself the task of summarizing McNair’s career. But again, the subject matter isn’t remarkable enough. McNair was a good football player, publicity-shy and team-oriented. He was capable of making spectacular long passes, but he was also known for running the ball, a practice some legendary NFL quarterbacks avoid for risk of injury.
In the 1999 season, he led the underrated Tennessee Titans to the Super Bowl against the St. Louis Rams, a classic game in which McNair engineered a comeback that fell just short when wide receiver Kevin Dyson, who had received the ball from McNair, was tackled at the one-yard line with time expiring. He tried desperately with his arm outstretched to get the ball into the end zone and tie the score.
The 2000 Super Bowl made McNair a star. The game was famous enough to be mentioned in the movie Castaway: when Helen Hunt tells Tom Hanks what happened while he was stranded on an island, she adds the information that the Titans “almost won.”
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Other than that, there’s not much to McNair’s sports story. 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 show’s best moment is a small but touching revelation. After the final whistle blew at the Super Bowl, Titans coach Jeff Fisher was heard talking in McNair’s ear as the quarterback knelt on the turf, upset at having so narrowly missed out on winning his sport’s biggest prize. That day, Fisher refused to tell reporters what the two men had said. He now confides that they simply said they loved each other.
McNair’s colleagues have nothing but good words for him. One former teammate expressed his wish that his friend be remembered for how he played the game, not how he died. It’s an admirable goal, but Untold hasn’t helped the cause.
