Part of the many, many documentaries playing at this year’s South By Southwest Film & TV Festival, I GOT BOMBED AT HARVEY’S is one of the festival’s opening day movies and is part of the Documentary Spotlight section.
About: In 1980, an ingenious boobie-trapped ticking time bomb – filled with 1,000 pounds of dynamite – was wheeled in the front doors of Harvey’s Wagon Wheel Casino in Lake Tahoe. Along with the bomb was a note demanding $3 million within 24 hours. While the bomb squad attempts to disarm the explosive, the FBI races the clock to deliver the ransom and simultaneously catch the extortionists. Nothing goes as planned, and each step uncovers darker secrets and suspicions of a deeper motive.
Reaction: A surprisingly intense documentary based on a bizarre case taking place all the way back in 1980, I GOT BOMBED AT HARVEY’S starts out an investigation and becomes something way deeper and complex. This is the type of documentary experiences that I long for at this festival, as I went into this not knowing anything about this Lake Tahoe, Nevada set story (to be honest, all I know about this place is the fictional Corleone Family moved here to get into Nevada gambling) and just how insane all of it is, and I can only imagine the process that filmmakers Amy Bandlien Storkel & Bryan Storkel went to to get this story on screen.
Told for the most part through re-enactments along with the usual interviews and vintage clips, the movie feels like this could also work as a narrative feature down the road! This has all the workings of a white-knuckle thriller at times, and the movie kept me glued to my seat for its running time.
This is usually the case with most movies but try to really go into this one without reading too much beforehand; I was genuinely surprised at a lot of this story and just how many sides there were, and it even kept me guessing in its final act of where exactly it was going to go.
As with most movies at SxSW the journey for the movie starts here, and I am sure this will find a home with most documentary fans!
This film and many others like it are showing at South By Southwest this year from March 12-18. For more information on this and other titles, point your browser to www.sxsw.com!