Directed by Janus Metz – Starring Russell Crowe, Jacob Tremblay and Shailene Woodley
A Harvard professor becomes involved in a psychological experiment with Ted Kaczynski while years later an FBI investigator works to identify the man behind a series of bombings.
Unabomber moves between two timelines, following Kaczynski during his time at Harvard while also following the FBI investigation years later. It’s an interesting structure on paper, but the constant back-and-forth never really gave me enough time to settle into either story.
It started to feel like an extended episode of Criminal Minds. There’s the FBI investigation, the behavioral analysis, the attempt to understand the mind of the person they’re hunting, and the occasional flashback to explain how he got there.
The movie keeps giving us pieces of the story without giving us enough time with any of them to really connect. The Harvard material doesn’t completely pull me in, and the FBI investigation never becomes compelling enough to carry the movie on its own.
Russell Crowe is very good as Henry Murray, but that’s not exactly surprising. He’s a pro, and this is the kind of role he can slip into pretty easily. Jacob Tremblay is also good as the younger Kaczynski, doing the best with what’s asked of him.
Shailene Woodley is fine as the FBI agent trying to understand Kaczynski. But a lot of the FBI scenes feel built around familiar TV-procedural tropes. None of it felt particularly unique or even especially real. It felt like a version of a story I’ve seen a dozen times before.
The movie is well made. The performances are solid. I just never felt like it became anything more than that.
It feels like a movie assembled from familiar pieces of other true-crime stories rather than one that develops a voice of its own.
There’s nothing particularly wrong with Unabomber. I just kept waiting for it to give me something to really connect with, and it never did.
Verdict: Not For Me