If you were of a nearly adult age in the 1980’s and mainly the 1990’s you will remember the Unabomber scare. We were all terrified to open a random package without dousing it in water first. A killing spree that started in 1978 and baffled FBI investigators until the arrest of Ted Kaczynski in 1996 obviously is still good fodder for a TV movie.
Synopsis: A Harvard student becomes the Unabomber after psychological experiments. Years later, an FBI agent’s pursuit reveals how his past shaped his deadly campaign that killed 3 and injured 23 from 1978-1995. | Rated R for language | 1h 37m
Did the Unabomber exist and was he Ted Kaczynski? Yes. Are all the other details in this movie accurate? Some?? The facts and the end result were more than likely taken and written into a story that would be intriguing to watch. No one wants to watch a group of guys sitting at a desk looking over evidence. Most crimes are solved with mundane skills. To make a good movie you need a character to follow. Enter Joanne Miller (Shailene Woodley).
Miller is the character that we see play out the events that led to the capture of Ted. She is fictional and created to tell the story, and add some drama and suspense. There is nothing wrong with that and Woodley is a solid choice for the role. So no harm no foul.
As we watch Miller work the clues in the late 90s we also get a back story of a young 16 year old Theadore Kaczynski (Jacob Tremblay) attending Harvard as a Math Major. He is a brilliant mind but with a skewed fixsation of societal rights and wrongs. He is taken under the wing of a Philosophy Professor (Russell Crowe) who had an ulterior motive for befriending the young student.
The film jumps back and forth between these two story lines as we see what might have led young Ted to do the bombings, and the FBI hunt to figure out who the bomber is. Spoiler alert, it was Ted.
UNABOMBER is text book example of what makes for a very solid streaming movie. In scope, scale, and writing it is a made for TV movie. The big screen would have swallowed it up and left viewers feeling robbed of their box office ticket dollar. But watching it at home on Netflix is perfect. It is entertaining and moves at a solid pace. We get good acting, a well known crime, and familiar faces, and never leave the comfort of our couch. Movies like this thrive on the streaming platform and I for one am thankful they are there.
Woodley gives us a strong crime solver but the real dance is with Crowe and Tremblay as Professor and student. They have some gratifying moments and in the more dramatic exchanges Tremblay holds his own with the seasoned Crowe. Though I am normally not a fan of split time lines in films, this one was ok due to the solid acting in both realms.
UNABOMBER gets a lot better grade as a streaming film than it would have as a cinematic release. If you have Netflix it is right there in your suggested watches, so click it. You will not be dissapointed.
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