By Dan Skip Allen 

I think I’m safe to say that the “Unabomber” Saga took the country by storm in 1996. When people were getting packages in the mail with explosives in them. Ted sent 46 bombs out and were reported to be received with 3 people who died and 23 people being wounded in the aftermath of this widespread dilemma. A manifesto was sent to the newspapers, letting the public know who and what this man was about. What made him tick per se. The finale took place in and around Lincoln, Montana, where Ted lived in the woods in a small shack. This is the stuff most of us Americans know, but there is a lot that we don’t know about this Saga, and that’s what this film deals with.

The film is mainly split into two halfs. The first half deals with a group of FBI agents who are hip deep into the investigation of these bombings after another man is killed from a bomb by opening a package he received. The FBI team is getting contentious with each other because this investigation is long and arduous, and they haven’t been getting anywhere. It’s not until Joanna Miller (Shailene Woodley) gets word of a man who says he knows who the “Unabomber” is that she starts to figure things out. It turns out it’s the brother of Ted Kaczynski, and he gives her some information about his brother. Enough, so she takes the information she gets to Lincoln, Montana. 

The other half of the film is a period piece set in the 70s. Young Ted Kaczynski (Jacob Tremblay) is a student at Harvard, where he is ostracized by most of his classmates. There, he meets Professor Henry Murray (Russell Crowe). He has an experiment that he is tasked with performing by the FBI that is meant to pit people against each other in a series of debates. The professor uses these debates to determine the mindset of the men involved in this debate. That is what determines who this man will become in his later years. The man we all know as the “Unabomber.” That’s how this film about this story goes.

Besides the cast members I’ve already mentioned, there is a group, others specifically part of the FBI Investigative team. Marc Manchaka, Stephen Ogg, Alexander Ludwig. These guys, like all supping cast members, support the story quite well. Also, Annabelle Wallis as Christiana Morgan, the wife of the Russell Crowe character. She is also involved in the experiments that her husband is conducting. Tanya Clarke plays a love interest of Young Ted Kaczynski. All of these supporting characters play a big part in this film and story by writers Sam Chalsen and Nelson Greaves. They didn’t overshadow Tremblay, Crowe, or Woodley at all. That’s a good thing about this movie.

There was a good investigative nature to this story but also an element of psychological manipulation. These two things prove to be the driving force of this film from the beginning to the end. Who’s got the upper hand in both of the aspects of the story is how this story unfolds going forward. There is a cat and mouse game on one side and a ticking clock on the other side to determine how this story is resolved. Even though we know a lot about this story because it’s a thirty year old historical event in this country, the writing proves to be a benefit to the film.

Also, with the split storytelling, there are two separate styles of cinematography and production design.  The 70s look saturated and brown a lot of the time, and the 90s look more modern than the rest of the film does. The clothing and hairstyling are both on point in both eras that the story takes place in. The dichotomy of the two eras was created  nicely by the director Janus Mets Pedersen. These two eras could have come across as looking odd together in the same film, but they worked well together.  

“Unabomber” is a pretty good modern take on a thirty year old or further story. I learned a lot about the investigative aspects from the FBI standpoint, I also learned about the man himself, Ted Kaczynski, from the period aspects of the story. The experiments run by the Crowe character were very informative to me. Both periods came together to make a fascinating story of this man who was thought to be a schizophrenic manual but was an intelligent genius who had disagreements with government and authority. He just went about it the wrong way. The performances were good from everybody. The score from Marco Bellrami, production design, and cinematography were all fantastic. This was a well-made movie all across the board. I think most people will learn about this old story as much as I did. It’s a good film from Netflix. 

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