Critic Reviews

From the remarkable cast (Michael Stuhlbarg and Bill Camp deserve analysis all to themselves, so enthralling are their beautifully developed supporting characters) to deft direction (Gibney, an Oscar-winning documentarian, brings his past expertise to scripted TV in clever, efficient fashion — the flash-forward testimonials and found footage both speak to his storytelling brilliance), this is a limited series worth seeking out. It may be an unmissable history lesson, but it’s also just one helluva story, told very, very well.

Tower feels like a real-life Homeland, with romantic subplots uneasily shoehorned into a narrative that shifts between tense missions abroad and heated debates behind close doors. ... Looming over it all is our own terrible knowledge of where this will end on 9/11. [19 Feb - 4 Mar 2018, p.14]

It's scary, a little sickening, and entirely spellbinding.

Many streaming series have bloated lengths and extraneous subplots, but almost every scene in Tower feels vital, even if it's occasionally guilty of being a bit too on the nose. ... In its softer-touch moments, the series excels at creating a sense of existential dread, offering answers to questions we wish we didn't have to ask, and finding something new to say about a story we all already know.

It’s a testament to The Looming Tower that the story is as gripping as it is, given that we know where it’s all going. Co-created by Dan Futterman and Alex Gibney, it plays a bit like “Homeland” before “Homeland” got played out.

Instead of being heavily self-important, The Looming Tower is swift and urgent, with an outstanding cast and zingy writing.

The Looming Tower is compelling television, even as it marches toward its tragic end.

The show doesn’t need to strain to make points about the sort of person who refuses to intuit what’s on the horizon–not that that stops Schmidt from indulging in melodrama. “I don’t get paid, sir, to be a citizen of the world!” he shouts, testifying about lives lost half a world away in U.S. bomb strikes.

The result is an accessible, illuminating series that does not downplay the petty and tragic elements of the tale.

It’s fascinating to watch the ways these men--and most of the principals were men--gathered information, formed theories and conclusions, and butted heads with one another over plans of action. It’s dismaying to absorb one of this miniseries’ most timely subtexts: that during the most intense time leading up to the 9/11 attack, the American media was distracted by President Bill Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky scandal.