New Netflix Bombing doc offers solid summary, little else

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With the 30th anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing looming, it was probably inevitable that we’d see a string of Bombing-focused entries into the apparently inexhaustible world of streaming documentaries, and it looks like all the biggest streamers are jumping into the fray.

Max dropped theirs last year – the contextually informative, if frustratingly true crime-y, “An American Bombing” – and earlier this month, the Disney-owned Hulu unveiled the more measured and in-depth “Oklahoma City Bombing: One Day in America,” a three-part National Geographic production examining the act, the manhunt, and the trial.

But when it comes to crime docs, one streamer still reigns supreme, and they’re finally throwing their hat into the Bombing documentary ring just one day before the three-decade anniversary this month.

Netflix is set to premiere “Oklahoma City Bombing: American Terror” on Friday, April 18th, and having seen it early, I can report that it’s a generally solid overview of the murderous attack and its aftermath, recapped with intelligence and reverence and structured to reflect how it played out in real time.

And there are also some goofy and unnecessary computer effect flourishes and some fleeting and misguided moments of reenactment that feel unneeded.

But more than anything, “American Terror” actually suffers from the exact same thing that sets it apart and makes it a unique entry into the Bombing doc deluge: its runtime.

This look at the horror, the rescue efforts, the perpetrators, the motivations, and the lingering scars of the worst domestic terror attack in American history runs just one hour and twenty-four minutes long.

That remarkably short runtime makes it seriously impressive that director Greg Tillman is able to even cover so much ground in the film, and it creates a propulsive pace that carries the events through the hours and days following the blast with appropriate chaos and compounding mania.

But it also means that the film has practically no time to actually explore the implications or cultural ramifications of the attack or to dig into anything deeper than the surface-level facts.

The greatest strength of “American Terror” – and the main element that sets this one apart from all the other Bombing documentaries so far – is its commitment to laying out the proceedings in the way in which they were first experienced by the public, hour by hour and day by day.

There’s no opening preamble to establish the perpetrators and no long-winded pre-explanation to frame the events with hindsight.

We get a look inside some of the offices of the Alfred P. Murrah Building as casually filmed by staff, and then the blast, cringe-inducingly presented as one of those unnecessary CG inclusions.

But from there, the film immediately spirals into all of the confusion, the destruction, the miscommunications, and the seemingly miraculous luck that led to simultaneous breaks in the case in just a matter of days.

Tillman presents everything with a feverish, racing chronology, laying it out to the viewer in the real moment-by-moment order in which everything was happening, and in which the people of Oklahoma City were learning the facts and accepting the realities.

And in a turn of commendable restraint for an age of overtly sensationalized killer-focused true crime, that means we’re not even introduced to bomber Timothy McVeigh until nearly two-thirds of the way through, when investigators trace him through the truck rental service and track him to a Perry, Oklahoma holding cell.

From there, all the relevant, far-right fringe elements finally come into play, presented just as the public began to understand them, weaving in the militant sentiments surrounding the FBI’s Waco fiasco, “The Turner Diaries,” the anti-government beliefs of the Nichols Brothers, and so on, racing rapidly toward McVeigh’s execution.

Which is all to say that “Oklahoma City Bombing:  American Terror” is fine.

There’s nothing new, nothing groundbreaking, nothing particularly unique in its presentation, save for the purely chronological unfolding, and there’s certainly nothing of particular interest to anyone old enough to have followed all of these developments at the time.

But we also have to understand who the target audience is here.

As the community and the individuals who experienced this monumental tragedy, and who still live with its continuing effects every day, it’s easy to believe that every new examination of the Bombing should be for us, and that it should offer something comforting or respectfully compelling.

But the main consumers of the record-breaking Netflix crime doc genre aren’t forty, fifty, and sixty-somethings in the OKC metro. They’re teens and twenty-year-olds spread out all over the country and the world, viewers that hadn’t even been born when McVeigh and his accomplices took at least 168 lives and changed the nation in an instant.

This film might just be a great little hour-and-a-half crash course for them, offering a comparatively bite-sized overview of the facts, the fallout, the chaos, and the immeasurable human toll of this most heinous and hideous act.

So if you lived through it, then no, you don’t need to watch this one. Your memories and your emotions that swell around each and every April are likely to be much more poignant and precise.

But if you have children or teens or young adults who have maybe never gotten the whole story as it unfolded at the time, you can feel confident in showing them “Oklahoma City Bombing: American Terror.”

And then maybe after, they can switch over to Hulu and watch the National Geographic series to get the bigger picture.

“Oklahoma City Bombing: American Terror” premieres on Netflix Friday, April 18th.

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Catch Brett Fieldcamp’s film column weekly for information and insights into the world of film in the Oklahoma City metro and Oklahoma. | Brought to you by the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.

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