Top documentary! But found the the Kenyan response frustrating and as I would imagine an unskilled force to be. At no point during the documentary was there any mention of an outside help like the off duty British Special Forces soldier that entered the mall and retrieved several hostages? Despite the CCTV footage being brilliantly strung together and documented it seemed the local forces and police responded in quite a poor and untrained Manor.
Terror at the Mall
2014
Action / Documentary / History
Terror at the Mall
2014
Action / Documentary / History
Plot summary
A documentary detailing an indiscriminate terrorist attack that left 71 dead in Kenya.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
February 25, 2022 at 07:11 PM
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Top cast
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Brilliant documentary
The best documentary about the Westgate mall terrorist attack
HBO comes to Kenya and does a better documentary film about Westgate than any Kenyan Media house. "Terror at the Mall" is a masterpiece. First they assemble all the CCTV footage from all the cameras located in and out of the building. Then they track down survivors from the footage and interview about a dozen coherent survivors. After that they piece together the stories, match the stories with the CCTV footage and get two or more survivors to narrate different segments of a particular story. In classic American fashion, the heroes stand out, one especially, Abdul Haji, is a delight to watch. He slides across the floor like a pro and waves two fingers at the target like you see 'em do in the movies. Yet he is only wearing a casual shirt and leading a team of plain-clothed cops who in their words, "could not wait any longer outside for reinforcements or the recce squad." Talking of the Recce squad, they had those cowards cornered before the military invaded the building and shot three of the elite cops. And in the scene where one of the elite men exiting the building carrying a wounded colleague exclaims, "f**k them!!" referring to the KDF soldiers, you can almost agree with him. Because on their own, the first responders rescued more people than the KDF who will best be remembered for looting the shops and throwing a bomb on the building. Yes, there's CCTV footage of a bomb hitting the building from the inside - enough of those lies about terrorists burning mattresses. But Haji is not the only hero. At the beginning the Asian journalist who provided most of the footage that was not retrieved from the CCTV systems explained how he got to the scene. "I got a call from a friend who told me not to go to Westgate, there's a robbery and they've wounded people, so I grabbed the camera and drove down there." The journalist wore a mask and followed the cops into the building. That's perhaps the only funny bit in the documentary. The rest is a gripping, heart-wrenching affair!
Horrifying but well-made documentary
An entire documentary of footage from the event is hard to come by. I have a hard time watching anything without doing something while I watch and I watched this in its entirety without taking my eyes off the screen. It was in part morbid fascination but mainly I was just enthralled and caught up in what was happening. There were a lot of very brave people in that mall and I hope all of them have recovered from whatever wounds, physical or mental, they received.
And the Kenyan army in 2014? Absolutely useless.