An American Bombing: The Road to April 19th

I love documentaries and learning more in depth about certain events or people. This cannot really be called a documentary. It is simply a forum for the makers of this to bash anyone opposite than them politically. Very clear agenda and instead of delving into this maniacs past and motivation, it seeks to paint all people right of center as extremists. It's honestly an embarrassment of a production. It's a real shame that even a documentary can't be fact based. They chose to demonize a whole population of people who had nothing to do with this event, but I am sure this was the intent of the producers. Feels like something the clowns at NPR would make. Just a pathetic effort all around.

In 1995 the most deadly act of domestic terrorism against the US government was committed in was. Committed in Oklahoma City. The key perpetrators were caught and convicted.

This documentary tells you a vague story of the context that the bombings took place and provided some vague information about the main bomber, Timothy McVeigh.

But beyond that there is no new information, and so they rush off into conspiracy theories with vague and easily dismissed claims or random tangents that are meaningless.

This is an okay documentary, but it really doesn't provide any depth or insight into the story of this bombing. So give it a miss really.

I'll give them credit that they did vaguely mention Ruby Ridge and Waco, but the director falls well short of why the events in OKC transpired.

More childern lost their lives at Waco than at OKC. The director seems to glance over all of the different events that led Timothy McVeigh to commit the atrocities that he did. McVeigh was wrong in what he did, but this film doesn't show how many atrocities that the US government has committed against out own people at the expense of taxpayer dollars.

The film does show some of the Federal agents involved seemingly show some remorse, and that they knew what was happening was wrong, but then glances over it.

Overall a an okay to good documentary until the last 10 minutes when the filmmakers are trying to make a connection with January 10th but coming to a misguided conclusion.

The similarities aren't that people got radicalized (they weren't on Jan'10 btw) but that both events seemed to be instigated by the FBI. The bomber literally spills the beans to a letter to a mother of a victim that the head of operations was FBI. The documentary glosses over it, the same way that they gloss over Carol Howe becoming an informant for the bureau of tobacco and firearms (ATF). The same organization that perpetrated Waco and radicalized those guys in the first place. How can this documentary be so blind?

Why I still give this some stars is that some of the interviews with the victims are very eye-opening and encouraging. Especially the part where the victims try to investigate on their own, again, the documentary never bothers to follow this thread but instead makes a huge leap to January 10. An event that is quite recent and still needs some proper evaluation and investigation by historians as well as journalists to see the full picture. But there are definitely similarities about which "instigators" went to jail and which didn't (hint: the ones working for the Bureau didn't even get charged). Pretty disappointing that the filmmakers didn't go where the story led them to but instead had their own prepared destination in mind.

4 out of 10.

I was interested in seeing this, based on the title I thought it would intertwine some of the purposeful 4/19 domestic terrorist attacks over the years, offer new insights, possibly connect it to today's domestic terrorism.

But it was really none of that. A lot of retelling of Waco and Ruby Ridge selected some information and withheld other facts; one example was the Branch Davidians in Waco who we know from survivor accounts that Koresh himself incited the fire inside on day 51, while most of them huddled in a safe room. Details like that being glossed over made me feel like this is not a "documentary" at all. A lot of it felt "anti-government", almost glorifying some of the revolutionaries. I guess it can be perceived differently based on where you stand politically... but I do not consider myself political in any way, and this film made me sit up several times saying "is that true?" Or "I don't remember that!" A quick consult on the Google machine refutes some of it, and my good common sense rejected some more of it.

Watch with a grain of salt, or don't bother with it at all.