The Netflix documentary strand Untold revisits dark moments in sport: controversy, failure, chicanery and injustice. It has a strong record for finding fascinating stories. Its latest episode, The Murder of Air McNair, looks into the suspicious death of an American football star, which sounds promising – but if there is fresh ground to be trodden, 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 the viewer could get via 10 minutes on Google. Untold only just clears that low bar.
It is mostly a retelling of the core facts. In 2009, the retired quarterback Steve “Air” McNair, 36, was found dead in an apartment in Nashville, Tennessee, having been 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.
The police interviewed McNair’s acquaintances Wayne Neely, who had called 911 but left the scene before the police arrived, and Robert Gaddy, who had recently argued with McNair over money relating 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 was then revealed to have exchanged scores of calls and messages with Kazemi in the weeks before her death.
Ultimately, the police determined that the tragedy was a murder-suicide. Kazemi had been struggling with her finances and her mental health and, they said, may have been angered by discovering that McNair was seeing other women. Critics of the investigation believe other suspects ought to have received more attention than they did.
There is little more to say, as far as the case goes. We see police interview footage that reveals nothing, peruse photographs of the crime scene – as well as gruesome shots of the bloodied 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 re-examined and has written books about McNair’s death, is interviewed. But he appears only in the final 10 minutes of the programme, because his opinion does not take long to explain. He believes that Gilliam should have been the chief suspect and, in 2010, attempted to persuade 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 programme.
Untold is at least brisk in its examination of the frustrating murder case, as it also sets itself the task of recapping McNair’s career. Again, though, the subject matter is not quite remarkable enough. McNair was a fine football player, publicity-shy and team-oriented. He was capable of spectacular long passes, but he was also known for running with the ball, a course of action some storied NFL quarterbacks shy away from because of the risk of injury.
In the 1999 season, he steered the unfancied Tennessee Titans all the way to the Super Bowl against the St Louis Rams, a classic match in which McNair masterminded a comeback that fell inches short of success when the wide receiver Kevin Dyson, having received the ball from McNair, was tackled on the one-yard line as the clock ran out, his outstretched arm desperately trying to thrust the ball into the endzone and level the scores.
The 2000 Super Bowl made McNair a star. The game was famous enough to be mentioned in the film Castaway: when Helen Hunt is telling Tom Hanks what has been going on while he has been marooned on an island, she includes the information that the Titans “almost won”.
Aside from that, there isn’t much to McNair’s sporting 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 now. But … that is about it.
The programme’s best moment is a minor but moving revelation. After the final whistle blew at the Super Bowl, the Titans’ coach, Jeff Fisher, was seen talking into McNair’s ear as the quarterback knelt on the turf, distraught, having so narrowly missed out on his sport’s biggest prize. On the day, Fisher refused to tell reporters what the two men had said. Now, he confides that they were simply saying they loved each other.
McNair’s colleagues have only good words for him. A former teammate expresses the wish that his friend be remembered for how he played the game, not how he died. It’s an admirable aim, but Untold hasn’t helped the cause.
• Untold: The Murder of Air McNair is available on Netflix
