Tread (2020)

August 31, 2020 5:31 PM

Pushed to his breaking point, a master welder in a small town at the foot of the Rocky Mountains quietly fortifies a bulldozer with 30 tons of concrete and steel and seeks to destroy those he believes have wronged him.

A real-life Falling Down-type story of a white man not getting what he felt entitled to, and going ballistic. Thankfully he didn't manage to kill anyone but himself. On the one hand, it's terrifying and unstoppable. On the other hand, seeing an armored bulldozer just wrecking shit? It's the sort of thing many of us have fantasized about.

Previously on Metafilter

Is the fact that the first hour is slow and dull enough to counteract the exploitative violence of the ending? Marv Heemeyer is portrayed as a man who had plenty of chances to succeed, to deescalate, to rejoin society. But he kept choosing to stew in his own anger. And for me that's where it succeeds, as a cautionary tale to work through anger in healthier ways (something I do struggle with).

[on Netflix in the USA]

posted by rikschell (1 comment total)

I watched this and the documentary series The Pharmacist within a couple of weeks, and one thing that struck me is how these guys both had long tapes of themselves just talking into a recorder that the documentaries then leveraged to great effect. I didn’t know that was a thing people did.

I think the heavy use of re-enactments in Tread just didn’t work very well.
posted by jimw at 9:23 PM on August 31, 2020 [1 favorite]