With an onslaught of selections at this year’s Tribeca Festival, one of the films that stood out from the press release was Mike Ott’s McVeigh. On paper, the film promised a psychological deconstruction of the man behind the unspeakable madness: Timothy McVeigh. However, rather than an in-depth exploration into his mind and motivations, the film delivers more empty promises than nuanced psychological insights, making it Tribeca 2024’s most disappointing and frustrating film.
McVeigh follows Timothy McVeigh in the lead-up to the Oklahoma City bombing, one of the deadliest domestic terrorist attacks in history. Inspired by the siege in Waco, Texas, the film engages with a monotony that leaves cinephiles shrugging by the time the credits roll.
One of McVeigh‘s biggest flaws is Alex Gioulakis and Mike Ott’s screenplay, which chooses to keep cinephiles distant rather than fully diving into his mindset and the sociopolitical influences behind his actions. Gioulakis and Ott’s script mentions Waco but offers nothing more into McVeigh’s thoughts and reasoning. While there is no room for sympathy for this awful human being, the fact that the script and direction keep cinephiles at arm’s length is disheartening. Ott’s minimalist approach did not fully work for me.
Alfie Allen’s portrayal of McVeigh is one of the film’s highlights. In a similar fashion to 2021’s Nitram, which featured a career-best performance by Caleb Landry Jones as Martin Bryant, the man who murdered 35 people and wounded 23 others in the deadliest massacre in modern Australian history, Allen’s portrayal is both empty, cold-blooded, and at times manipulative. On the supporting side, Anthony Carrigan, Tracy Letts, Ashley Benson, and Brett Gelman all give fine and commendable performances but fail to be anything more than connective tissue, rather than leaving a lasting and emotional impact.
With an individual so polarizing, folks expecting a similar trajectory to Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story will be met with different results. While Dahmer was seen as a self-aware series that ultimately glorified Dahmer, I felt the opposite. The series descended into the darkness of evil and never attempted to humanize Dahmer. I felt the film could have followed suit in its execution and final product.
It’s always a shame when one of your most anticipated films of a festival turns out to be one of the most disappointing. Unfortunately for me, McVeigh lands in that category. A film that aims to be both complex and intricate lacks both of those traits and fails in delivering an insightful exploration of one of the darkest chapters in American history.
