Tower (2016)

An interesting story that most young people probably haven’t heard about, but I have mixed feelings about the animation and reenactments.

The clean, colorful animation and the stark, white backgrounds for some of the interviews sterilize the whole experience. And the interviews with the younger versions of these adults are poorly written, melodramatic, and unnaturally delivered. The real interviews, of which there are only the briefest snippets, are much more powerful than animated recreations. That’s the real stuff.

Charles Whitman fired shots for 96 minutes. How did I know this documentary was going to be exactly 1 hour and 36 minutes long? From the tower, 150 shots were fired. I bet there were 150 shots in the documentary. By watching, you get a horrific feel for how many and how often shots were fired.