November 5, 2017

Tower


It's crazy to consider now, but in 1966 when an angry 25-year-old went on a killing spree with a sniper rifle from the tower in the middle of the UT Austin campus, it was an entirely new phenomenon. Today we'd just call it another mass shooting almost indistinguishable from so, so many others, but the concept of a "mass shooting" just didn't exist in 1966.

This documentary uses a mix of rotoscoping, archived footage, and survivor interviews to recount the stories of many of the heroes and victims of the tragedy. This might sound callous, but even at eighty minutes in length it feels just a little too long; by the time the tower is stormed and the shooter is killed, you're just ready for it to be over, you know?

What depressed me most about the movie is how there are going to be documentaries about Aurora, Sandy Hook, the Pulse Night club, Vegas, you name it - or, how's this for depressing, maybe there won't even be. Ugh.

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