Oklahoma City Bombing: American Terror 2025 * * * Stars

CITY WALLS

The Oklahoma City bombing occurred on April 19, 1995, carried out by two terrorists named Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was the main target of said bombing, as over 150 denizens lost their lives amidst the dust and rubble. That's the blueprint for Oklahoma City Bombing: American Terror, a competent documentary which begs the audience member to dredge up the sadness and utter gloom of something that happened thirty years ago. "I thought maybe I was dead, but I was buried alive." Yeesh!

So yeah, "American Terror" is not a frills docu nor does it try like heck to reinvent the desperado wheel. It does however give you the proverbial creeps as you watch it, loading up with 82 minutes of grainy archives, old school social media platforms, and present-day interviews from the battered people who were there. The Oklahoma City bombing, well it predates 9/11 and COVID and the D.C. sniper attacks and Columbine and all the other despairing crap this country has had to go through. Director Greg Tillman knows this and gives "American Terror" the feel of a horror film and/or lingering incubus. It's like taking in the look of The Belko Experiment or 2017's The Snare but without all the aspects of being arcane.  

Oklahoma City Bombing: American Terror, yup it's lean and mean, a mere thumbnail as opposed to viewing something about the same occurrence via a miniseries or whatnot. A haunting image of the dissected building here, a haunting image of a projectile victim there, the actual explosion caught on vintage camcorder, an overhead shot of an edifice that looks like the inside of a fraying skeleton. "American Terror" with its mere, brief snapshot of a running time, almost feels like a cinematic hack job. That's if it weren't so darn soul-stirring. Gravity "bomb". 

Written by Jesse Burleson

iHostage 2025 * * Stars

iPADDED

"At some point it ends". Yup, it sure does. And if you're referring to 2025's iHostage, it ends quite abruptly. No mystery, no twist, no intrigue, just cut and dried, finito! 

Anyway iHostage is an inessential slickster of a movie, the kind of stuff Brian A. Miller would've done ten years ago. A subtle zoom here, some shiny cinematography there, an empty, forceful musical score, a few pedestrian gunfights. iHostage is about some crazy dude who strapped with a bomb, invades an Apple Store, demands millions in Bitcoin, and takes someone with a heart problem as his captive. The film obviously has a hook with the whole tech company thang and such. Otherwise it would be about as trifling as watching reruns of American Gladiators on a Wednesday afternoon.

So yeah, iHostage stars Soufiane Moussouli, Admir Sehovic, and Louis Talpe, actors who give performances anywhere between middling to overreaching to ample. They are caught in a flick that although decently edited, feels dated when you compare it to more heightened swipe like 2005's Hostage, Captain Phillips, and/or Mel Gibson's Ransom. Oh and it doesn't help that this thing is based on a true story. I mean that's some serious injustice mind you. You're better off reading an article about the events of iHostage or watching a documentary about its detainee conch on free-to-air television. You certainly would get a more cavernous point of view. 

Directed by seasoned helmer Bobby Boermans and shot with sheeny locales in Amsterdam, iHostage has a few tense moments and anything but a downer of a coda. The problem is it doesn't bring new or fresh material to the denizen-seized genre. 100 trivial minutes go by, complete with an angry terrorist, some scared internees, a negotiator chiming in, and good old SWAT getting their gun on. We're talking cinematic deja vu here. Oh wait, there's a million dollar retail outlet and ear buds involved. My bad. 

Written by Jesse Burleson