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First Impressions
I’ve just finished watching Part 1 of ABC’s miniseries The Path to 9/11. I thought it was as thrilling as any spy movie I have seen, with a plot that twists its way from the World Trade Center bombings in 1993, to the arrest of mastermind Ramzi Yousef, to the race to capture Osama Bin Laden, and to the arrest of an Al Qaeda operative at the U.S.-Canadian border. ABC aired the movie commercial-free.
It was filmed in the same realistic shaky-cam style that’s used by the SciFi Channel’s Battlestar Galactica series. It felt as if you were part of the scene, and the camera man was catching everything as it was happening. Nearly all the music in the movie came from sources that were actually in the scene: a boombox, a set of drums, a car stereo, a call to prayer. Very immersive. Very gritty. Very intense.
Controversy
ABC has taken a little bit of flak for The Path to 9/11 because the director took some creative license to heighten drama and make things fit in the allotted time frame. The controversy was based around a few scenes that suggest President Bill Clinton was too preoccupied with the Monica Lewinski scandal to follow through on the pre-9/11 capture of Bin Laden. Before the movie was aired this evening, some individuals had been calling for ABC to change the offending scenes. Just read some of the comments left on ABC’s The Path to 9/11 blog. Even Clinton himself expressed his disapproval.
I admit the Lewinski thing was a little cheesy, but I don’t think there was anything political behind it. The U.S. called off a planned operation to capture Bin Laden in his Afghan hideout well before 9/11. I’m not familiar with the inner-workings of the CIA, the FBI, and the government’s anti-terror organizations in the late 90’s, so I can’t even begin to suggest a reason why the operation was called off. I suspect the film maker David L. Cunningham simply used the Lewinski scandal, which was happening at the time, since it was the best concrete motivation available that viewers could identify with.
In response to the controversy, ABC added a disclaimer every hour stating that the movie was not a documentary, and that it was based on the 9/11 commission reports, as well as other published material and personal interviews. They also follwed the airing of Part 1 with a short ABC Nightline news report on the current search for Bin Laden. I understand why they aired the disclaimers, but I thought they were annoying, and I would have preferred to watch The Path to 9/11 without them, especially since the movie was airing without commercial breaks.
Edit: ABC did edit out a few scenes in response to complaints. The scene where the Americans and the Northern Alliance were prepared to capture Bin Laden did feel like it had been cut short. You can view the deleted scenes here.
Conclusion
So far The Path to 9/11 is a great movie. I look forward to Part 2. I don’t know how anyone could confuse the movie with a documentary. It’s filmed in a realistic style, but it doesn’t look anything like a documentary. I suspect the main problem comes from ABC’s use of the word “docudrama” to describe the movie. While a film maker can make a real documentary say just about whatever they want, the prefix “docu” implies that there is certain level of true-to-life footage. The Path to 9/11 has none.
The movie is a movie. And now that it’s been released, instead of complaining about it, people can actually watch it and enjoy it.
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