Film Review: Tower (2016)

The producers held a TCA panel yesterday, so I decided to check this one out for myself. I came back a different person.

One of the biggest misconceptions about animation, regardless if this is in film or television, is the treatment of the artform as a genre as opposed to a format. Very seldom do you see American-produced animation for any genre aside from comedy and maybe some action/drama. Romance? Nope. Sci-fi? Not unless it’s English dubbed and from Japan. How about documentaries?

Tower director Keith Maitland had the presence of mind to use animation to tell a harrowing real-life tale about one of America’s original mass school shootings. Unfortunately, nowadays, most of America has been desensitized to mass shootings, but in 1966 when a deranged lunatic climbed a clock tower at the University of Texas-Austin and ended the lives of 16 people, an event like that sent shockwaves all over the nation. Helping tell Maitland’s animated tales are the people that were there. Students, innocent bystanders, and brave police officers give chilling first-hand accounts of what happened on August 1st, 1966 featuring a soundtrack riddled with the terrifying sounds of a sniper rifle. As the timeline and stories progress, we add in returning gunfire and the eventual killing of Charles Whitman, but not before we learn about the heroic tales of brave men and women, not all of whom were in uniform, that risked their lives to help others.

I found myself on the edge of my seat the entire run of the film, and the producers at Minnow Mountain should be commended for helping craft this timeless piece that should be required viewing in just about every school in the world. I would have liked to have seen more about the killer as after more research I found info concerning the possibility that Whitman actually had a brain tumor which could’ve helped charge his aggressive behavior and actually sought help for.

The reason I would’ve liked to have seen that aspect of the events that had transpired on that day would be to shed light on our country’s gross understanding of mental illness, and in almost every shooting instance I’ve heard in the last few years there’s always warning signs from the FBI or school counselors and somehow(and the results are shown in a sizzle reel at the conclusion of this film) no background or wellness checks(this one never gets talked about) for those looking to purchase weapons. Maybe if someone had helped Whitman to get the help he was seeking or if we had SOME sort of check on the wellness of his being, who knows how many people could have been saved that day and on anyone of these heinous acts.

Not to turn this into a political piece, but the really good documentaries raise questions, and this film does that but I do think more should have been brought up. Regardless, Tower is a gut-check piece that demands your viewership.