American Manhunt: Osama Bin Laden, directed by Mor Loushy, Daniel Sivan

Review by Antony Cirocco, 22-05-2025

American Manhunt: Osama Bin Laden is a new documentary series released on Netflix, May 2025 directed by Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan, who have directed a range of documentary series each in the socio-historical space. This is a big budget, high-impact documentary retelling of the American intelligence community's lead-up to, and aftermath of, the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, 2001. 

Featuring archival footage, interviews with key CIA staff, including personal advisors to President Bush and various leaders of the CIA. It’s an extensive and detailed telling of the events from 1996 to 2003 and beyond. It’s not for the faint-hearted but it is an excellent watch. 

American Manhunt Osama Bin Laden, official movie poster

The visuals are great, interviews are well lit and of high quality. The archival has been restored to maximum resolution, giving it texture and authenticity that feels real, exciting and earnest. The music maintains a sense of movement, impending doom, drama and the overall rhythm and pacing of the piece is consistent with a Jason Bourne sequel…and whilst all that is happening…something is missing….

This is a historical retelling of the events in the lead up to and the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the twin towers in New York 2011. So brace yourself there is some traumatic and confronting footage on display here, it can be confronting for some. The film was directed by 2 people Mor Loushy, Daniel Sivan, both experienced and seasoned in the craft of documentary making, and the second in their “American Manhunt” franchise. This documentary features in-depth interviews with CIA field commanders and counter terrorism specialists. There are details of operations (now over 20 years old) that have not been seen on camera before, giving visual confirmation to some of the stories told in the interviews. For this reason it feels like a new and exciting retelling of past events. It’s perfect for a new generation of documentary viewers who were too young or not even born when the 9/11 saga unfolded. For an older generation, it’s time to look at a detailed summary of the events, minus the conspiracy theories. This film achieves this well.

The interviewees are the experts here and the documentary makers are not featured in the film at all. This story is new in the sense that it’s told with the perspective of hindsight. It enables the experts to tell their version of events and the decisions that were made, right or wrong. It’s dynamic, it’s outrageous, unrelenting, and in some ways it’s a horrific story to tell, but it’s necessary to look at real-world events through multiple lenses and this film is one of those lenses. The viewing experience is a good one, don’t get me wrong but there is something missing…

The Directors here weave a story of decision-making through the war on terror that America waged on the Taliban and Al-Qaeda with purpose, style and excitement, its great visual storytelling as the serious nature of the events deserve. The audience is engaged and rewarded for their time with an honest, good story, told well. The lighting and the camera work in the interviews are first class, except for the occasional green screen key, which could have done with some more polish. The editing and pacing are a highlight here, it’s fast, snackable factual storytelling fit for a mainstream audiences that normally prefer milder forms of infotainment. It’s cut and packaged for a mainstream American patriotic audience, almost to a fault. The music is dramatic and compelling but not unique, there’s no Phillip Glass here. It’s polished but not classy by any stretch. It’s all analogue, there are no special effects here and the titling is minimal, which helps maintain and engage the audience. This is old old-fashioned documentary for the masses, done well.

Ethically, there are some concerns about this production; there are a lot of grabs of Bin Laden speeches, looking up at him as an equal and portraying him as an adversary of equal measure. Possibly because they were shot by his offsiders. Sure, he kept the CIA guessing, yes, but he was not a man of virtue or integrity, skulking, hiding, killing indiscriminately and keeping men, women and children in a constant state of fear, no signs of virtue here. I guess it’s a question of, how do you portray Bin Laden, that figure of history with limited access to footage, audio and his personal diary. Maybe it’s imagery itself that is the issue in this documentary? There is so much diversity of rich imagery, photographs, old video, surveillance footage and old TV interviews, as you would expect with a reflexive historical documentary that at times hits the audience as a meta narrative experience that is diverse, complex and at times overwhelming. Or is it just the case that we have never seen so much archival about the events of 9/11 in the one place before, it’s bold, it’s in your face…it’s entertaining, sadistically so. 

In terms of journalistic rigour though…it took me a while to sift through the excitement in my mind, through the rapid juxtaposition vision, the tv news grabs, the newspaper clippings, was I over stimulated? Bedazzled? I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Was it an unbalanced story?…no…maybe? There were interviews with everyone, the retired CIA team, White House employees and a field operative on the ground. The directors even interviewed Leon Panetta the ex-CIA Director. That’s everyone right…?… No it’s not.

There is always a propensity of filmmakers to go straight to the decision makers in an event, not the victims and bystanders impacted by those decisions. For some it’s the power of bringing interviewees to heal and challenging them in the interview, that leads them to focus on those interviewees with the highest access, it’s an ego thing for the director to lock in an interview with the former CIA director and let the projects investors know, and in that moment of producing zeal forget those without a voice and leave them, the victims of politics, power plays and war…voiceless. Now, did that happen here? Maybe, it feels like it. There were almost no interviews with the victims of 9/11. There were no victims in regard to the incursion into Kabul. There were no Arabic, Persian or local voices of the Afghan people here; that was a glaring omission, one I can’t overlook. For me that is the only chink in what is otherwise a well-crafted documentary. As important as this documentary is…there is too much focus on decision makers and not enough focus on the victims of terrorism, both in New York in 9/11 and on the ground being bombed by drones in Afghanistan, all victims …equally are overlooked. It’s what was missing when I watched this documentary and as someone who is reviewing this documentary, for all it’s glossy interviews and engaging archival footage and compelling musical score it can’t go unsaid that this documentary lacks balance.

This film is texture-rich, it’s gritty, grimy, and glossy all at once. It straddles history, contemporary warfare, politics, intelligence and international diplomacy. It’s very real, sometimes too real, it’s shocking imagery of torture of targeted drone strikes in suburban Afghan neighbourhoods and car bombings is all symbolic of gritty modern warfare and intelligence. There is a focus on gung-ho patriotism that doesn’t really sit well in a factual documentary, just give the audience the facts and let them decide how to feel. 

This film at times feels like a road movie, from Kabul to New York, to Guantanamo Bay and back to Washington DC. It’s great, it’s a journey across time, the 10 years it took to capture the target UBL and it’s a narrative that is beautifully crafted. The pace of the film and the shocking imagery at times is unrelenting but this is war right, it’s not going to be pretty, or nice, or safe, it will be a difficult film to watch for some. If there is a weakness to the directing here, the film could have done better to link the decision-making of the CIA ‘experts’ to the totality of deaths on both sides of this war.

This film is excellent, if spy thrillers and war stories are your thing. If you work in the military, law enforcement, investigations or are generally interested in international politics or are connected to the thousands of victims on both sides, this film will entertain and inform you. Let's be clear though, this film is tailor-made for an American audience and, to a degree, the rest of us are just onlookers to the horror surrounding the events before and after 9/11. 

This film is new but it will have a long-lasting legacy, securing the history of the events in the minds of many. Is it rewriting history? To a degree, yes, by the sheer omission of victim statements, the rewriting of history cannot be denied. However, from the perspective of the American Intelligence machine, this is as accurate a telling of the events and decision-making that we are likely to see on a commercial platform like Netflix. 

If you like compelling spy-based dramas, then this documentary telling of real events will lock you in, entertain and educate you about one side of the 9/11 story. It’s worth a watch 4 out of 5.

Review by Antony Cirocco

Check out the trailer