kennbr

As you can see from some of the reviews here, misinformation about Waco still abounds.

The warrant WAS to search for automatic weapons. Specifically semi-automatic weapons converted into machine guns. Such conversions are 100% illegal. Not only did the agents on the ground testify to hearing automatic weapons fire, so did the journalists present. This is also all in addition to them recovering automatic weapons after the fire.

Meanwhile another reviewer insists that if the Davidians had grenades that they would have exploded in the fire. I can only imagine this reviewer was simply not paying attention because 1) Footage of the initial shootout captured the sound of very loud explosions which were implied to be the grenades and 2) There WAS a very large explosion at some point during the fire. Even if those explosions and the large one during the fire could not be attributed to grenades, that doesn't mean the Davidians weren't attempting to construct them, which is all that the delivery driver's finding of an empty grenade hull actually ever implied.

The documentary also did very little to explore the issue of who fired first, despite there being an enormous amount of theories and speculation about this--both theories that the ATF did and to the contrary. It instead simply gives the benefit of the doubt to the ATF agents, which is pretty far from unbiased or definitive. Not even to suggest they're lying, they just could have been mistaken.

The one piece of information this documentary DID provide that's usually absent in many Waco documentaries is the audio recording of Davidian members discussing pouring fuel and distributing hay, which implies they were setting the fires. It also includes FLIR footage from helicopters which shows the flames beginning simultaneously at three different locations, which does not support theories suggesting the FBI HRT set the fires either intentionally or unintentionally.

Despite what you believe about what happened that day on Waco, this documentary takes the side of the government's explanation of the event, and I think it's unfortunate that it doesn't provide more substance to support that. It's not that I disagree with it, it's just that it spends much more time interviewing people who clearly have a stake in the matter and whose views can't be seen as impartial by any means, rather than reviewing cold hard facts, which are readily available.

Beyond that, it doesn't really give equal time to all those involved, and it seems to be unfairly weighted to make the HRT operation seem to be at fault for things going so badly. The Davidians were presented as religious fanatics who didn't know any better, the FBI negotiation team was presented as the only voice of reason involved, and the HRT was painted as simply a gungho force of overly aggressive soldiers who unnecessarily escalated things. Given what the documentary did show, it's hard not to agree with it, but considering that only ONE member of the HRT was interviewed, it feels pretty slanted and like there's much more to the story left out--and having watched many other Waco documentaries, I know there is.

Overall, I was pretty disappointed, especially given that this is a Netflix docuseries. With their propensity for turning small subjects into 8 episode installments of mind numbing minutia, it's really surprising that they dropped the ball so hard making only 3 episodes for this when SO many more facets of the event could have been explored. It just feels extremely incomplete and shallow, examining only the very surface of the event.

On the other hand, there is an abundance of never before seen footage, and what's more some footage that's been seen before with this level of video quality. They really knocked it out if the park as far as collecting and presenting stock footage, creating visual representations of what happened, etc. But unfortunately the actual informative quality seemed to suffer because of that.

The best I can say for it is that it's phenomenal supplemental footage to other information that's already available. The worst I can say is that it's very shallow and biased in its dissemination of information about the event. Overall, worth a watch, but by no means comprehensive.

I really don't like documentaries that are actually just dramatized reenactments of the events, and prefer investigative documentaries that rely solely on actual footage, audio and other media involving the event. This documentary tries to straddle both, but unfortunately tries to derive way too much substance from the re-enactment portion. Most of this has to do with one of the FBI's suspects, and at that point in the film the production really goes off the rails into being primarily an over-acted, dramatized re-enactment. I think they felt this was really necessary to better highlight the reasons why the FBI suspected this person, maybe feeling that simple narration of transcripts might have been too boring. However, as with all re-enactments, you then run into scenes like a deposition hearing between the FBI and the suspect that are so dramatized you don't know what was actually said and what was part of the script the production company provided.

I would have preferred if it had been a purely factual documentary, or at least if Netflix had made it more clear that it was so largely re-enacted so I could avoid it all together.

Here's how every episode goes in a nutshell:

Someone is killed Detectives immediately begin interviewing the usual suspects (boyfriend, ex-husband, ex-employee, etc.) The detectives go down the list until alibis, DNA evidence, surveillance footage, etc. Eventually rule out each "usual suspect" After they've wasted all that time and ruled out everyone on their suspect list they do a modicum of actual investigative work and end up finding the "unexpected killer", which actually translates to a completely unrelated and impossible-to-expect person

It really highlights the way investigators like to say everything is suspicious. Your timeline doesn't match what your friend says about the timeline? Suspicious. Your timeline DOES match what your friend says about the timeline? Suspicious. Eventually when everyone has a solid alibi--or my personal favorite, knows their rights and/or has an attorney--they move on, all the while wasting time trying to throw darts and make something stick. It's only until after all that is exhausted they do something simple like find a DNA sample, run it through a database, and find a suspect that wasn't on their radar at all. In the meantime, you get to watch investigators try to coerce false confessions out of innocent people.

Basically an unintentional expose into the stupidity and laziness of modern police investigations.