It presents testimony from both sides, and shies away from cheap shots. We feel we are seeing a fair attempt to deal with facts.

A masterful, terribly engaging, and horribly affecting documentary.

A fascinating piece of American mythology.

This isn't the first time that a group who chose to opt out of more traditional societal participation and remove to somewhere remote and private have been called a cult, but rarely can their activities have caused quite such consternation with, in this case President Clinton's particular version of, "Uncle Sam". By ensuring that most of the broadcast media were placed safely out of range, the authorities have ensured that there is little actual archive of substance to substantiate many of the claims made around the infamous confrontation caused by the antics of David Koresh and his "Branch Davidian" sect of Christianity. Sadly, though, I think that pictorial absence really causes this overlong and very verbose analysis to struggle. It's not that I wanted to see charred bodies being taken from burnt-out wreckage, but the seemingly endless Congressional testimonies served only one purpose for me: to illustrate just how hopelessly partisan and incompetent so many of our democratic representatives are. Those interrogations, augmented with a few more pertinent contributions from people more familiar with matters religious, legal and psychological, form a framework that I felt cried out for some guiding journalism. This film presents us with quite a disjointed series of postulations about just what made the undoubtedly charismatic Koresh tick, but with so little hard fact to underpi…