Before the first drone strikes, before that history-altering late-night raid in Pakistan, and before the grainy photo of a lifeless body in a compound half a world away — there was fear, rage, and a country desperate for answers. And for nearly a decade, that desperation fueled a sprawling, secretive manhunt for a terrorist mastermind that forever changed the course of American history, a search evocatively captured in the new Netflix docuseries American Manhunt: Osama bin Laden.
“I was a kid when 9/11 happened. All the way up to my early twenties. I was always led to believe that America was the good guys. We were the force of good. Cause of God and America values.Looking back at it now. Looking at our country now… God, I was so naive and dumb back then.” — YouTube commenter
That post, buried in the trailer’s YouTube comments section, could’ve just as easily have doubled as the tagline for Netflix’s gripping new docuseries about the search for the Al-Qaeda chieftain that’s currently sitting on a flawless 100% Rotten Tomatoes score as of this writing (it’s also the #1 Netflix show in the US for the moment). Because this series doesn’t just revisit the most infamous manhunt in modern history; it reopens the emotional wounds and ethical questions the US has been living with ever since.
Everyone knows how the story ends. On a moonless night in Pakistan, a Navy SEAL team executed one of the most consequential missions in U.S. military history. But what’s often forgotten is the murky, high-stakes maze that played out in the shadows for nearly a decade in between 9/11 and that final, fatal shot. American Manhunt: Osama bin Laden plunges headfirst into that darkness, guided by directors Daniel Sivan and Mor Loushy (Camp Confidential), who make no attempt to lionize.
Instead, they zero in on the analysts, operatives, and officials who were tasked with stopping the next attack.
Mind you, this is not some sort of Netflix documentary about “America, the savior.” It’s about a team of people given an impossible task with barely a roadmap. Over three tightly constructed episodes, American Manhunt tracks the emotional toll and moral ambiguity faced by the people chasing bin Laden. Viewers hear directly from the CIA, FBI, and Department of Defense insiders who lived through it, as well as former White House officials and journalists.
There are no slow moments, just a relentless and at times gut-wrenching excavation of how intelligence agencies pieced together the puzzle that led them to a compound in Abbottabad — and how every breakthrough came at a cost.
“We didn’t want to just tell the story,” the directors said in a Netflix promotional interview. “We wanted viewers to feel like they were in the room, forced to make the same impossible decisions.”
In one sense, American Manhunt is about the pursuit of a terrorist. But in a deeper way, it’s about the price of vengeance. About what we lost in the years between the towers falling and the gunfire in Pakistan, and about what it means to look back now — when the dust has settled but the wounds remain. History is written by the victors, but this gripping Netflix release asks the obvious follow-up: What did that victory actually cost?
