MCVEIGH
(director/writer: Mike Ott; screenwriter: Alex Gioulakis; cinematographer: Daniel Vignal; editor: Dagmawi Abebe; music: Adam Weiss; cast: Alfie Allen (Tim McVeigh), Brett Gelman (Terry Nichols), Ashley Benson (Cindy), Anthony Carrigan (Frederic), Tracy Letts (Richard), Isolda Dychauk (Jen), Karen Suriano (Marife), Jane Mowder (Faust), Tracy Letts (Richard Snell); Runtime: 90; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Miles Alva, Nicolaas Bertelsen, Ash Christian, Joe Pirro, Shaum Sengupta, Monte Zajicek; A Symbolic Exchange/Rouge Wage Pictures; 2024)
“A tense minimalist drama on the dangers of violence from domestic terrorists.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Mike Ott (“California Dreams”/”Littlerock”) directs this slow-burn cautionary-tale on political extremism and co-writes it with Alex Gioulakis. It’s a tense minimalist drama on the dangers of violence from domestic terrorists. It reveals the events that led the racist, paranoid, sociopath, alt-right follower and unhinged Iraq war vet, Timothy McVeigh (Alfie Allen, British actor), to plant a powerful fertilizer/chemical bomb in a rental truck that explodes outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people and injuring 680. It’s the deadliest attack of domestic terrorism in U.S. history, in which McVeigh was executed for.
The loner, born and raised in upstate NY, wandered from Arizona to Kansas to Michigan and eventually he ends up living back in Arizona. He spends his days operating a stand at a right-wing gun festival, where he sells bumper stickers that say “When guns are outlawed, I will become an outlaw.” At night the loner watches TV, pointing his gun at political figures who oppose his views. He also briefly had an affair with a diner waitress (Ashley Benson), but dismisses her when he catches her snooping around his house.
McVeigh visits an Arkansas prison to see the death row white supremacist prisoner, Richard Wayne Snell (Tracy Letts), a major influence in his life, who is soon to be executed for killing two in a racially motivated crime. McVeigh is pissed over Snell’s pending execution, the liberal embrace by the country, and the Waco Siege and massacre by the government in 1993. He and his pal Terry Nichols (Brett Gelman) are collecting weapons in a storage facility and planning for an attack on the government.
The McVeigh story hums along at a moderate clip, not telling us anything we didn’t already know from the news (it should have dug deeper into his life instead of being primarily an atmospheric film). In its conclusion, it shows the bombing incident, which is a jarring watch in contrast to its mildly told prior narrative.
It played at the Tribeca Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 6/17/2024 GRADE: B-