I’ve got mixed feelings about this one because it’s effectively two films in one, the sections separated by 38 years. The first part, set in 1958, explores the early life at Harvard of the Unabomber, the second part, set in 1996, the investigation leading to his arrest. The first part is superb, with Russell Crowe, devoid of his usual bombast, in superb form and telling as cruel a tale as you’ll ever come across.
The second part is the kind of True Crime drama which has become a Netflix trademark. And interesting though it is, it’s pretty much standard for the genre, but gets itself into trouble by establishing Joanne Miller (Shailene Woodley) as the FBI investigator who effectively tracks down the criminal, battling the department and male misogyny to do so. And although this is too reminiscent of Clarice Starling from Silence of the Lambs (1991), the big problem is that Joanne Miller didn’t exist, she’s a figment of someone’s imagination, and the gender switch comes off first of all as an insult to the guy who actually did the solving and a crude attempt to inject unnecessary feminism into the tale.
And once you learn that, you start to question the truth of the first section. Which I very much hope has not been fictionalized because it’s just terrific.
Theodore (Ted) Kacynski, son of a butcher, is a pretty smart guy to get into Harvard in the first place, but he’s your standard misfit nerd, doesn’t feel he fits into society, reacts badly to women coming on to him, falls out with his dominant father and meek mother. He’s meant to be studying maths but has taken a class in philosophy taught by eminent professor Henry Murray (Russell Crowe) who uses, unusually, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick to introduce students to his subject, and takes a fancy to young Ted, on account purportedly of his brainpower (I should point now there are no sexual undertones) and invites him to take part in an unique experiment, ostensibly to discover how well people can perform in a debate. Murray is a kind, warm, character who empathizes with Ted’s travails at home, explaining that he, too, was victimized as a child, called defective by his father because he didn’t fit in. Murray also has an alluring sidekick, Christiana (Annabelle Wallis), who is both a high-up assistant for the experiments and his girlfriend.
But the debate is a two-person affair in a private room, a lab of some kind because Ted is harnessed up to all sorts of electronic equipment to measure how he responds during the exercise. It’s not the usual kind of debate, his opponent, known only as Mr C, is cruel, vindictive, arrogant, and whose main weapon is not argument but character assassination. It’s not a debate but a tongue-lashing. But Ted constantly comes back for more. But no matter how much he stands up to his opponent, the stakes are always tilted against him.
Eventually, we discover that Professor Murray is working for the Government, conducting a brain-washing experiment. He’s already headed up an investigation into the U.S. soldiers brainwashed by the Chinese in Korea and now the men in black want to understand how to use brainwashing themselves. Murray is under some pressure to deliver results and it turns out that Ted, initially viewed as an ideal candidate for brainwashing, becomes an impediment. So Murray decides to “break him” himself. Except our supposedly submissive student turns the tables and we get a glimpse of his devious criminal mind.
I know nothing about the Unabomber but I suspect the producers know too much and probably feared the tale of how Ted terrorized America for 15 years using bombs through the post is already too well known to make an intriguing thriller, especially as the older Ted is only seen as a heavily bearded fellow living in a cabin in the woods.
For people like me, ignorant of the facts of the case, which is ancient history by now, and this serial killer downgraded in the public eye by far worse serial killers, I was pretty taken by the investigation which centered on one agent, Miller, standing up to the rest of the department as she follows a different clue, using linguistics to catch the killer. Effectively, the person who uncovered the link between Ted and the Unabomber was Ted’s younger brother’s wife who noted the connection between the written language Ted used in general correspondence to the killer’s manifesto published in the newspapers.
Anyway, even with my reservations about the clumsy gender switch, I found this totally engrossing. Russell Crowe (Nuremberg, 2025) is very much back on mild-mannered form. Shailene Woodley (Ferrari, 2023) is at last given a leading role to do her talents justice, Jacob Tremblay (The Life of Chuck, 2024) sizzles as the troubled student and Annabelle Wallis (Mutiny, 2026) shows how easy it is to switch from the horror movies with which she made her name.
Directed by Dane Janus Metz (All the Old Knives, 2022) from a screenplay by debutant Sam Chelson and Nelson Greaves (Unfriended, 2014).
All told, compelling stuff.
