Parents' Guide to

Oklahoma City

By Barbara Shulgasser-Parker, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 15+

Intense docu on terrorist Timothy McVeigh has violence.

Movie NR 2017 102 minutes
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Is It Any Good?

Our review:
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This is an expertly reported, illuminating, and terrifying documentary that couldn't be more timely. In light of widely publicized protests and demonstrations by armed Nazis, white supremacists, and self-described racists and anti-Semites, this is an eerily relevant look at the evolution of a white American so enraged over his belief that the government was out to take his guns that he needed to bomb a building and take 168 lives.

Oklahoma City does its best to be even-handed. There's no doubt that what McVeigh did was deliberately hateful and inhuman. But the filmmakers definitely make a case for how badly the federal government managed the Ruby Ridge and Waco debacles, however inadvertently. McVeigh's tragic actions were empirically wrong-headed, but the movie does at least explain how someone of his misguided mindset would harbor the paranoid belief that the federal government was coming after people like him.

Movie Details

  • In theaters: January 21, 2017
  • On DVD or streaming: March 7, 2017
  • Director: Barak Goodman
  • Studio: PBS
  • Genre: Documentary
  • Character Strengths: Courage
  • Run time: 102 minutes
  • MPAA rating: NR
  • Last updated: May 19, 2023

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