Review: '9/11: Inside The President's War Room' Vivid, Visceral, and Potent

Jeff Daniels narrates Adam Wishart's documentary "9/11: Inside The President's War Room," which uses new interviews and archival footage and photographs to take us back twenty years to the day of the worst terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil.

When nineteen terrorists of Saudi Arabian origin piloted four hijacked passenger planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and a field in Pennsylvania (the latter being the result of a courageous attempt by the passengers to regain control of the aircraft), then-President George W. Bush was away from Washington, D.C. In fact, he was reading a book to elementary school children in Florida when he got the news that a second aircraft had hit the World Trade Center, an act that made it clear that not only had the first plane's impact not been an accident, but that the country was being subjected to a well-orchestrated attack.

Bush's security detail got him, a number of other officials, and a clutch of journalists onto Air Force One, which then headed to several military bases around the country. Those interviewed – Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Solicitor General Ted Olson (who lost his wife, Barbra, in the attacks), Bush advisor Karl Rove, and others – recall a day fraught with misinformation, anger, fear, and Bush's determination to get back to Washington, D.C. against the advice of those around him in order to deliver a message to the American people and project strength.

The film is a mixed bag. It has the gravitas of a "Frontline" presentation, and is skillfully edited and put together, but it also feels maddeningly narrow in focus. We learn all about what happened aboard Air Force One as Bush was being shuttled from base to base while officials were trying to put the pieces together and gain an understanding of what was going on, and we learn details about officials in D.C., including Cheney, who gathered in an antiquated bunker, but the day's larger impact is barely addressed. At one point Condoleezza Rice discusses being confronted about the overreach of the government's response (the hastily-passed Patriot Act comes to mind, as does the invasion of Iraq, though Rice is not specific), and she wonders aloud what anyone wants for the government to have done differently. The list is long on that particular score, and while Rice's defense –�that officials didn't feel they had a lot of time to respond – might have seemed substantial in the fog of war and panic, it doesn't convince –�particularly in the midst of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban's lighting-quick takeover there.

The film gets out of the "war room" (that is, Air Force One and the bunker in D.C.), and into the streets of New York, which relieves a sense of claustrophobia; but at the same time, recalling the terror and destruction visited on lower Manhattan evokes still-searing trauma. No one who remembers 9/11 can see the footage of the second airplane striking the South Tower, or video of the twin towers collapsing, without flashing back to that day.

Bush's comments are, to his credit, captivating; when he talks about having felt a need to respond in a "reasonable" manner, with his decisions based on "facts," he seems the very definition of a statesman, thanks in large part to the way our expectations of the Executive Office have been tarnished since 2016. But his comments sometimes remind one of the underlying hints of authoritarianism that the GOP exhibited even back then; at one point, Bush likens the presidency to the rule of "a king," which is not at all an apt where a democracy is concerned, but which does square seamlessly with Bush's offhand comment, made in December, 2000, and before he even assumed the presidency, that if the United States "were a dictatorship it would be a heck of a lot easier" for him to govern over it.

The film plucks at our immediate and reflexive sense of patriotism, and our responses of sympathy and respect for the firefighters, police officers, and military men and women who served our nation so bravely and so well during the crisis. But it also feels like a puff piece dedicated to throwing the best possible light on Bush. The inexplicable decision to go to war in Iraq in response to something Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with isn't even glossed over; it's simply ignored, as are so many other reckless and costly errors that took place under Bush's watch.

Recent world events (and indeed the entire tenure of the one-term president Joe Biden defeated last November) serve as a reminder of why reality-based facts and an adequately expansive context are crucial, not only to understanding history but to navigating the complexities of the ever-evolving situation we call the present moment. "9/11: Inside The President's War Room" brings the past back to vivid, viscerally potent life, and it tells a riveting story – but it has little appetite for addressing the questions that linger on, alongside the pain.

"9/11: Inside The President's War Room" premieres Sept. 1 at Apple TV+.