Rating: NR | Runtime: 90 minutes
Release Date: March 21st, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Decal Releasing
Director(s): Mike Ott
Writer(s): Mike Ott & Alex Gioulakis

What would we need?

I won’t deny that the time for a Timothy McVeigh movie is now. This was an ex-army, white supremacist, 2A-nut who decided to strike back against the American government for what he and his like-minded brethren saw as governmental over-reach during the Branch Davidians siege in Waco, TX. That event—and the Ruby Ridge standoff, another incident involving a search warrant for suspected weapons stockpiling—combine to serve as the basis for the modern-day militia epidemic running rampant across the country (and currently unofficially sanctioned by the Trump administration via dog whistles to deflect culpability). The Oklahoma City bombing was the first strike of a movement that ultimately led to an insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021.

To go back to 1995 is therefore a timely pursuit. Especially if you’re drawing lines to where we were and where we are now. We’ve gone from domestic terrorist attacks to an increase in hate crimes to literal Nazis marching in the streets with police protection to a “more civilized” contingent of “disruptors” weaponizing their political power to strike back against the so-called “Deep State” by infiltrating the very government they accused of over-reach to actually over-reach and dismantle it from the inside. Just as US Senators and cabinet members start to say the quiet part out loud about apartheid and Hitler, I don’t think it would be a stretch to poll certain elected officials on whether they view McVeigh as a hero. Hell, my own aunt just posted on Facebook that sending tattooed Venezuelans legally seeking asylum to an El Salvadoran labor camp (without due process) was “six million dollars well-spent.”

So, it was nothing short of disappointing to discover director Mike Ott and co-writer Alex Gioulakis decided not to mine deeper than the isolated surface of one man’s actions with McVeigh. At worst, they even seem to be trying to absolve those who helped Tim (Alfie Allen) by paying particular care to ensuring it was his idea and his alone. French-Canadian neo-Nazi Frédéric (Anthony Carrigan) is desperate to get in on the game, but McVeigh shuts him out. Nichols (Brett Gelman) is so scared throughout his aiding and abetting that he leaves without warning the morning of the attack. The only person Ott allows to be a firm push towards infamy is Timmy’s death row mentor Richard (Tracy Letts) goading him to finish what he himself failed to do a decade prior.

All these external forces (including a potential love interest in Ashley Benson’s Cindy, who he shoves away for daring to go into his room and earnestly wonders why she hates him afterwards) prove to just be noise. They simultaneously tether Tim to reality and coax him over the edge to satisfy his extremist desires. We aren’t therefore watching a conflicted monster (thank goodness), but a conflicted life that poses no threat to his singular goal. In that respect, Ott is at least pulling no punches as far as not allowing sympathy for McVeigh, but he doesn’t supply an alternative target for us to care about and thus invest in the narrative. You can’t expect there to be suspense in a true-events film that focuses on the villain doing villainous things. No investigators trying to catch him or even a look at the victims he’s about to kill.

File the whole under the nihilism label instead. It’s almost daring us to revel in the violence because that’s the endgame and there’s nothing else to look along the way. That it’s all so methodical and minimalist doesn’t help matters since the progression becomes rote. Tim needs ammonium nitrate? He only needs to pose as Nichols’ nephew to get it. He needs other materials? He can steal them without incident and drop a name to buy more from dangerous people without batting an eye. Maybe that’s the real terror? That there were zero roadblocks to what he ultimately accomplished? Yeah, I guess that’s a scary thought—especially now that America is disappearing its citizens and threatening to impeach judges for refusing to toe a party line of autocracy.

McVeigh is a well-made piece, but its lack of proving its worth as a version of this story to tell (either as prescient or cautionary) sinks it. Gelman (a slow-witted lackey susceptible to peer pressure), Carrigan (a charismatic evil relishing the knowledge that McVeigh is doing “God’s work” from afar and salivating at the chance to help), and Letts (a determined zealot of hate slipped beneath a mask of intellect to falsely justify his actions) are very good in supporting roles and Allen’s robotic nature and stoic peacocking when threatened (perfectly contrasted by his little boy insecurities around the opposite sex) really brings the titular character’s clichéd psyche profile to life. We just aren’t learning anything. McVeigh is an exact replica of so many who came before and after him. We need more than his readily available and presumed process. We watch the news.

---

Alfie Allen as “Timothy McVeigh” in the thriller MCVEIGH, a Decal release. Photo courtesy of Decal.