"Top-notch production values and performances prevent
this
exhaustive miniseries—based on the bipartisan 9/11
Commission Report—from venturing into exploitation." TV Guide, 9/4/06
"'The Path to 9/11' is a fast-paced, bracing
docudrama that tells the story of the terrorists and the people who
tried to stop them…." – Michael
Barone, Creators Syndicate, 8/28/06
"…gripping and tension-filled and visually dazzling." –Michael Barone,
www.usnews.com http://www.usnews.com/ , 8/24/06
Named "Show of the Week" "…powerful…. Artfully crafted in a cinema
verite style…. It is an unsettling testament to the film that the London terrorist arrests of
Aug.19 fit flawlessly into the pattern it dramatizes." – The Week,
9/8/06
"Perhaps the most ambitious programming initiative is ABC's attempt to dramatize the 9/11
Commission Report…." – Michael Learmonth , Variety,
8/14/06
"'Path'
maybe the
most comprehensive and powerful retelling of stateside terrorism yet."
– Mike McDaniel, Houston Chronicle, 8/14/06
"One of this year's most powerful 9/11
stories, is, in fact,
ultimately about how little has changed since that day. …Fast paced and
shot with handheld cameras, 'Path'
plays like a somber, dysfunctional '24,' with all the grit but little
of the success. …Executive producer Marc Platt and writer Cyrus
Nowrasteh say they wanted to
match the just-the-facts tone of the report. ('The report didn't use
any adjectives' is a mantra both men repeat. It's exaggerated but true to the commission's spirit.) Platt
hired director David L. Cunningham, a documentary veteran, to give the movie a verite look,
without emotional tricks like zooming in on fraught moments. …The last
few minutes—inside the planes, the towers and the conference rooms on 9/11—are tastefully handled, though no less chilling.
But they're beside the point. What matters is what happened before and
what happened—and didn't afterward. An epilogue notes the commission's
report card, issued last December, which found that most of its
recommendations—securing weapons of mass destruction, delegating
antiterrorism funds by risk—have been carried out badly or not at all.
That endnote is the scariest thing in the miniseries." – James
Poniewozik, TIME magazine, 8/7/06
"…ABC's massively ambitious, impressively absorbing
'The Path to 9/11' is the opposite of easy
viewing. It is intensely serious, and seriously well done. Based on the
9/11 Commission Report findings, this
two-part docudrama is chilling and maddeningly frustrating, as it
depicts a world in which red tape drips with innocent blood. …This is a
classic 'had we but known' (though we should have known) scenario. With
global scope and the cinematic tone of an espionage thriller, 'Path' traces events from the first
WTC biombing in 1993 to the
horrific events of that Tuesday morning in 2001 (which comprise the
gut-wrenching final half-hour). No, it's never easy to watch. But it feels necessary."
– Matt
Roush, TV Guide, 9/4/06
ABC /
Disney Under Pressure of Clinton to Change "The Path to 9/11"
