Is the re-telling of this incredible true story worth the watch?

If you’re of a certain age, you’ll understand exactly who and what the Unabomber was. In this adaptation of the true story, the film explores the early psychology of Ted Kaczynski, a once Harvard University Professor of Mathematics, living out his life off grid in the woods.

The film does also concentrate on the final days of catching Kaczynski, and how he was eventually caught after 20 years of fear bombings, which killed 3 people and injured 26 more.

Jacob Tremblay (The Life of Chuck), stars as a young Ted Kaczynski, studying at Harvard, and becomes embroiled in a Philosophical and psychological experiment, sponsored by the CIA on how to create techniques on how to interview and break suspects. Russel Crowe stars as Professor Henry Murray. Annabelle Wallis stars as Christiana Morgan, Murray’s assistant and lover. Shailene Woodley (Divergent series) stars as Joanne Miller, and FBI agent who actively pursues the Unabomber.

In reality, the character Joanne Miller is a composite of several different agents who helped pursue and identify Kaczynski as the bomber, leading to his eventual arrest. For me, I dislike this when film-makers roll different people into one character. I understand there is sometimes a need to do this, but often it is an egregious choice that undermines the efforts placed into solving the case by those actually involved.

As the film plays out, it flips between 1954 and 1995, giving you the backstory to how Ted Kaczynski developed his ideals that led to his bombings, and the 20 year old mystery of who he was, leading to how he was eventually apprehended. I thought it was filmed well, and the period set pieces were well executed where it mattered. The same is also said for the 90’s set-pieces. The attention to detail on the actual cabin the Unabomber lived in, and prepared his explosive devices and the one constructed for the film was pretty much a one-to one replica.

The issues with this film mainly reside with the exposition. It felt like there was a lot of fluff in the dialogue, either to attempt to pad out the runtime or an attempt to give the scenes some gravity. It never really works, up until the end confrontation between the young Kaczynski and Professor Murray.

The other issue that struck me is the disconnect between the multiple bombings and just the one seen on film. If you knew nothing about this, then you would be forgiven for thinking that only one bomb was ever sent. Yes, this is bad enough, but the fact that a further 15 bombings took place over 20 years needed to be addressed so that you could really get into the mindset of Ted Kaczynski. It’s not until the end that we are given a very brief dialogue of these events, and what happened to Ted in prison.

The only real standout in the film was Tremblay, who really sank his teeth into the role of Kaczynski, and at times, felt genuinely scary on not just his views, but how he played the game with Murray and the CIA. Ultimately, Tremblay showed us just how clever and psychotic Kaczynski truly was. I expected a little more from Russell Crowe, but his performance was certainly good given the screen time he had.

All in all, I felt a little flat after watching this, feeling like I had not been given a complete account of this fascinating case. I don’t think enough effort was placed into how the story would be told out in such a short space of time. At just below 2 hours in length, I think there’s a lot to unwrap with 20 years of story. I just think it could have been managed better.

The film is streaming now on Netflix, and if you would like to learn a little about this subject, go ahead and watch it. But be prepared to feel like you need to do some internet digging to get a better picture of the Unabomber.

I give this film…

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Until the next review…don’t accept strange packages. It could be Temu and that’s not a good thing!