Critic Reviews

You must see Oklahoma City, if only to know the enemy. They’re not stuck at the airport.

What makes Oklahoma City a haunting experience is that the movie, in laying out the road that led to his humanity withering and dying, demonstrates a disquieting continuity between the anti-government wrath of Timothy McVeigh and the fervor of anti-government wreckage that has just been given a new credibility in America.

Goodman also doesn’t state overtly why the story of the Oklahoma City bombing is so relevant today. He doesn’t have to. His methodical recounting of the rise of white nationalism and fringe movements reverberates with today’s world, in which racist violence and conspiracist lunacy has been emboldened and brought troublingly into the mainstream.

A chilling documentary that firmly positions McVeigh not as some delusional loner but rather as a product of a far-right subculture that looked on the U.S. federal government as one of the most dangerous forces on the face of the Earth.

While Goodman’s feature doesn’t focus our recently inaugurated president, it serves as a blunt reminder of what has happened, and could happen again, when misinformation is spread to dangerous, angry, homegrown radicals.

Goodman moves mostly chronologically and procedurally through it all, using the white nationalist movement as the anchor. It all feels unbelievably relevant in the year 2017. The hate and fear lives on, and continues to burn bright.

Beyond its message, however, and despite some unfortunate omissions in the history it recounts, the film succeeds as one of the most gripping and suspenseful docs of recent years.

The documentary, as it grieves for those losses, points to divisions in American society that are as glaring as ever.

Oklahoma City suggests that conspiracy theories today have consequences for tomorrow — a message with terrifying implications in an age of fake news.

Oklahoma City is certainly well made and relatively searching, but it can only scratch the surface of its very disturbing and complex subject.