All this movie was was more propaganda to try and demonize David Koresh and the Branch Davidians and make our government look like the "good guys." The ATF wasn't the "good guys" in this situation. If you think they were, ask Robert Gonzalez. He himself was an ATF agent that was sent to infiltrate the group... He doesn't condone the raid or the way the raid was conducted. This movie could have been produced by the government itself and it couldn't have cast them in a better light. Complete an utter propaganda.
February 17, 2007 |  | Tim Daly was a wonderful David Koresh |  |
I was a Senior when this happened.I was doing a project for school,while watching this show. I loved the songs,Oasis,and Rise,Rise,Rise. Those are the only religious songs I like. If the Cops didn't punish him,God himself punished David Koresh that April 19,1993.He's not in heaven with his followers.He molested those kids and the mothers.He was mean mean to kids. He embarassed Women in front of everyone by pulling up their skirt. God[hopefully] saw that. Even Jesus Christ wouldn't do that,even I'm not a fan of the guy.He's ugly He didn't give me cleverness.
March 20, 2006 | | Even the screenwriter disowned this film | |
This made-for-TV film was quickly put together to exploit the deaths of so many ATF agents and Davidian men, women and children, barely after the smoke had cleared in Waco. Years later, the screenwriter who wrote this film, Phil Penningroth--much to his credit--confessed that he had been pressured by television executives to forget about researching the facts, and to instead use the film as a forum for promoting the government's spin on events at Waco. Do a google search for Penningroth's article, "Righting Waco", and you'll soon learn, as he eventually did, that this film was an utter sham from the beginning, and never even sought the truth. But such is the awesome power of propaganda in a nation of corporate-dominated media: when even the people who write the stories we're told don't know they are lying, how are the masses supposed to know?
When the Davidian "compound" burned on April 19, 1993, I was horrified by the carnage, but felt like so many others that the Davidians had brought it on themselves, and the ATF/FBI had done the best they could. After all, that is what this film portrays. But after researching the matter for myself, traveling to the site, speaking with survivors, and kneeling at the tiny plaque which marked the location of the concrete room that became the oven that burned so many women and children alive, I will live the shame of my former beliefs for the rest of my life. The U.S. government killed those people, used the enormous power of the mass media to lie about it, and we all believed them.
Watch "Waco: Rules of Engagement" instead. Or better yet, travel to the site yourself and stand where those flames once reached into the sky. Then you'll understand what really happened. This film is classic only in the sense of its value as a powerful propaganda piece that diverted an entire nation's attention away from the rogue power of its own government--an atrocity that Timothy McVeigh attempted to avenge with yet another senseless tragedy in Oklahoma City. But that's another story....
November 4, 2005| | | Good TV movie about a paranoid egomaniac | |
Although hastily made, (if my memory is correct, it was still being filmed when the 51 day standoff reached its fiery finale) this lightly fictionalised account of the events leading up to the siege is good and thought provoking viewing nonetheless. I watched it for the first time after reading an account of life in the Branch Davidian Cult written by Marc Breault (an American who now resides in Australia and who was Koresh's right hand man for 3 years) and Martin King (who was a reporter for the Australian version of "A Current Affair" and who was the only journalist ever invited into the Branch Davidian compound to conduct a 1992 interview with Koresh and his minions), and I have to say, the book gave me a clearer vision of Koresh than the movie did - enough to say that the outcome was inevitable. But Tim Daly delivers an absolutely compelling portrayal of Koresh, showing the viewer the full depth of his paranoia, his gigantically proportioned libido, his disregard for authority, and most of all, his complete dominance over his followers. I am not going to say anything about the performance of the US government agencies who were involved in this tragedy, since my fellow reviewers have said enough, but after getting a feeling about Koresh from the book and the movie, I daresay that even if the ATF had arrested him whilst he was on one of his forays into Waco and THEN gone to the compound to serve the search warrant, the ensuing shootout would still have occurred, for Koresh had completely ingrained his own paranoia into the psyches of his followers. And although the ATF made MANY mistakes on 28 February 1993, they certainly have paid for them - 4 agents paid with their lives.
August 9, 2000| | | The Video Bible of FEDERAL CONSPIRACY THEORISTS | |
Had the cast & crew of this laughable piece of Quackery lived in North Korea, they would be able to churn out this kind of stuff on a monthly basis.
The reality is that were President Clinton to ship over several hundred CIA agents to Northern Ireland & have them adopt the same tactics towards Sinn Fein as they adopted towards the Branch Davidians, then there would be hundreds of dead Catholic women & children.
Monthly.
Back in the early 1970s, the American Psychiatric Assoc. determined that homosexuality was no longer to be classified as a mental illness.
Now is the time for the APA to reverse the process.
The belief that the FBI were "innocent" of murdering dozens & dozens of Branch Davidians must indicate
PARANOID SCHIZOPHRENIA.
And warrent incarceration in a top security mental hospital.
For life. May 28, 2000
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