On June 4, 2004, Colorado resident Marvin Heemeyer was mad as hell and was not going to take this anymore. After years of sparring with the “good ol’ boys” town hall and Granby city court over a sewer line dispute at his muffler shop, the middle-aged welder fought back in the only way he felt he had left: with a bulldozer he had secretly modified with enough concrete, steel and fully loaded rifles to become a homemade tank.
It’s quite a story. Although it sounds like Guns & Ammo fanfic, Tread is not pretend. It’s a documentary detailing the whole sordid story as a man-vs.-government squabble in a town of less than 2,000 people boils into worldwide headlines.
Tread spends about an hour interviewing the principals to get both sides of the story. Then we get a third: the truth, with footage of Heemeyer’s two-hour rampage of unbridled property destruction and threats to lives. As it unfolds, director Paul Solet draws upon his background in horror films (including Grace and a segment of Tales of Halloween) to ratchet up a considerable amount of tension and sustain it, even if Heemeyer’s real-life Killdozer moves at a mere 2 mph. —Rod Lott