Unabomber

Mr. C: I mean, seriously, where do you get these ideas?
Ted Kaczynski: They fall from the sky.

Alas, this Netflix offering, which is supposed to give us some insight into the Unabomber, also feels as if it fell from the sky – and without a parachute, crashing to the ground and disintegrating into pieces instead of making a coherent story.

Many people are familiar with the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, who sent bombs to various people over the span of 18 years, killing three and injuring 23 – some lightly, some severely. This is not a spoiler. Netflix seems to assume the audience is familiar with this basic fact, and the film would make little sense without it.

Netflix, at the beginning, signals the film is based on true events. But a film should choose to be either a work of fiction or an actual documentary. Instead, it tries to be both and succeeds at neither.

Some choices are such clear fabrications that they distract completely from the film-watching experience. The protagonist for the good guys, for the FBI, is an attractive female detective. I am all for smart girl bosses, but this choice feels like deliberate political correctness and her character sticks out like a a sore thumb, with such old tropes as her being at odds with other detectives. Not only is her role a fabrication, it makes everything else feel like fabrication, so that we distrust nearly everything the film depicts.

Furthermore, because she’s a fabrication, and because they’re simultaneously trying to pay homage to reality, they don’t develop her character at all – I presume because there’s no character on which to base it. I understand that a film trying to squeeze so much information into less than 100 minutes might not be able to give much personality to detectives, but several moves on her part seemed insane. Taking vacation days to go to Kaczynski’s cabin by herself? Really? And being the only one to complain about the mistaken profiling?

The movie divides itself between Ted’s time at Harvard, where he is a young math prodigy where he has interactions with a professor, Henry Murray, played by Russell Crowe. Henry Murray was a real professor conducting real experiments. The implication is that the psychological torture Murray and his colleague Christiana Morgan inflicted on the young Ted Kaczynski is what led to the bombs – if this is not so, why have both in the same film? But Kaczynski graduated in 1962, which is also the year Murray retired. Sixteen years pass before Ted starts sending out bombs. Are we supposed to believe they are really connected? More development and some follow-up of those experiments would have been interesting, but that was not possible because Kaczynski was not caught until 1996 and Murray died in 1988.

Moreover, because the film makes up stuff about the manhunt and the capture, doubt is cast on the time at Harvard. As that is further back in the past with fewer living people to consult, probably a great deal is fabrication.

This review is not criticizing the actors, especially not Jacob Tremblay, who plays Ted Kaczynski, mostly at Harvard, as a very intense young man. He does a fine job. Russell Crowe, of course, is capable as well although his character has aspects that are cliché – the Harvard professor who is not as smart as he thinks he is.

The most interesting parts, in my opinion, were when the film returned to what had to be genuine reality. I don’t think Netflix faked the Peter Jennings clip explaining why some media outlets were printing the manifesto.

And it turns out publishing the manifesto, even though it may have appeared to be yielding to the demands of a terrorist, provided the break the FBI needed. Ted’s brother, David, recognized the language and realized Ted had to be the bomber. He and his wife contacted the authorities, leading to Ted’s capture.

What’s missing from the film makes me wonder if the creators simply could not access the information. Was it not possible to interview actual FBI detectives? Also, what about the brother who turned him in? I would have liked more information from him. The realization and the decision to turn in his brother must have been difficult. Was it true that his wife was the one who believed it and he did not? That’s what they say in the film. But as there are so many other inaccuracies, we can’t have faith in what the film shows.

Here are a few more of the areas the film does not address:

• The professor’s experiments are interesting but there is no conclusion, no follow up. For example, we don’t know if the experiments impacted Ted. If they did, how? And if they did not, why are they in this film?
• We get little history with respect to the investigation. It was the most expensive investigation for the FBI. Why? What did they do to make it so expensive?
• What was it like when people realized there was a crazy bomber out there? Given that many of these went through the mail, what was the reaction of USPS?

Title musings. The “Unabomber” name comes from the code given by the FBI. It has nothing to do with the singular feminine indefinite Spanish article. Kaczynski was targeting UNiversities and Airlines with his BOMBs, so the FBI combined the letters to create UNABOMBer.

Bits and pieces

The film doesn’t force blood and gore on you, only some tension, which I appreciate.

Henry Murray's experiments make me think Harvard is not a place to be trusted. Of course, ethics in experiments were very different back then.

The off-grid life. Long before internet. One reason the FBI had such a hard time tracking Kaczynski was because he really was off the grid. He got many of the supplies for his bombs from junkyards.

They did a good job replicating the cabin; in general, the cinematography was excellent.

Overall rating

If you want to learn a lot about the Unabomber, recommend watching something else. The only reason I learned anything was through the questions the film raised about the case for me, which I then researched. This is also one of my few reviews without a section devoted to outstanding or evocative quotes, because there really weren’t any. Despite that, the film was fairly watchable although never good. One and a half out of four bombs.

Victoria Grossack loves math, birds, Greek mythology, Jane Austen and great storytelling in many forms.

• Movie Reviews home