McVeigh
Directed by Mike Ott
Written by Alex Gioulakis and Mike Ott
Starring Alfie Allen, Brett Gelman, and Ashley Benson
Unrated
Runtime: 1 hour and 30 minutes
Available in theaters and on digital March 21

by Samantha McLaren, Staff Writer

On April 19, 1995, exactly two years after the ATF siege on the Branch Davidian compound at Waco ended in tragedy, a bomb exploded in a truck parked beside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 167 people, including 19 children, and injuring hundreds more. Perpetrated by anti-government extremist and army veteran Timothy McVeigh with the help of Terry Nichols, the attack remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism on U.S. soil. This is essential information to know going into McVeigh, because the film’s indifference toward context may make it entirely impenetrable to the unfamiliar.

In fact, McVeigh is all about what goes unsaid. We follow the titular terrorist (played by Game of Thrones’ Alfie Allen) as he disinterestedly peddles bumper stickers at a gun show, watches the Waco hearings on TV, circles a neo-Nazi cult, contemplates murdering a man who slighted him, and starts building bombs with army pal Nichols (Brett Gelman). But no one ever says what they’re planning out loud. The closest we get are conversations between McVeigh and white supremacist Richard Snell (Tracy Letts), first at the Arkansas prison where Snell awaits execution for two racially motivated murders and later on the telephone. (Whether or not the real Snell and McVeigh were ever in contact can only be speculated on.) Snell is all too happy to pump McVeigh up with terrorist talking points, like reminding him that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” But it’s all just code shrouded in secrecy, wrapped in paranoia. The viewer is never granted access to McVeigh’s innermost world, even as he climbs into the truck and sets off for Oklahoma City.

It makes for a disquieting watch if you know what’s going on, amplified by Allen’s controlled and chillingly expressionless performance as McVeigh. One brief outburst at girlfriend Cindy (Ashley Benson) when she gets too close to discovering his plans is the only shred of emotion we get; after she’s gone, he shows no signs of regret. In some scenes, McVeigh appears almost dead-eyed. In others, it’s clear his mind is ticking away behind those cold eyes, but director Mike Ott and cinematographer Daniel Vignal never let the viewer get too close to empathize or even understand. The camera often pulls in slowly on McVeigh from afar, but never bridges the gap completely. The gulf of distance between us is the point: what he plans to do is unfathomable to anyone who hasn’t drunk so deeply from the radicalization well that they’ve drowned.

Contrasting Allen’s performance is Gelman, near unrecognizable without his beard. Gelman’s Nichols is more accessible but equally vile, telling McVeigh about the “Fillipino pussy fest” of buying a mail-order bride moments before calling his wife a “real sweet girl.” (The real Nichols was 35 when he married 17-year-old Marife Torres.) Nichols, initially giggly as a schoolboy as he detonates a practice bomb beside the deadpan McVeigh, grows sweatier and more anxious as the film progresses, but co-writers Ott and Alex Gioulakis are careful to avoid giving the character a moral out. There are no heroes in McVeigh, no one to ground our sympathies or provide comfort. Only bad people plotting terrible things just beyond our reach.

The lead-up to this particular terrible thing is slow and methodical, the atmosphere overwhelmingly oppressive throughout. Everything is muted and gray, the score minimal, building dread. But all this pressure never releases. Instead, we part ways with McVeigh as he drives into the city on the day of the attack, the chirruping of the birds underscoring the tranquility of the morning he is about to shatter. That alone is not a bad place to end, but Ott makes the baffling decision to then cut to a rapid-fire montage of archival footage showing the aftermath, edited chaotically and punctuated by loud sound effects—gunfire, helicopters, screams, random cha-chings. Perhaps an attempt to force viewers to confront the unmooring reality of domestic terror, this climax nonetheless marks such a jarring tonal shift that it undermines the restraint of all that came before it.

More aggravatingly, it weakens McVeigh’s opportunity to say something weighty about the homegrown extremism that is even more prevalent—and far less underground—today than it was in 1995. With April marking the 30th anniversary of the bombings, McVeigh could have been the film we need right now. Instead, it doesn’t so much leave the viewer with a haunting warning as it does with the lingering sensation that a crucial piece was missing from this puzzle.

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