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Half of \u201cUnabomber\u201d takes place in the mid-1990s, where FBI Agent Joanne Miller (Shailene Woodley) investigates a lead that practically falls into her help. The other half takes place over 30 years earlier, when a young Ted Kaczynski (Jacob Tremblay) took part in a psychological experiment under Harvard psychology professor Henry Murray (Russell Crowe), who developed a once-noteworthy theory about human personality named, not very cleverly, \u201cPersonology.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Henry Murray is no Beach Boys and he\u2019s no Macaulay Culkin, either. Heck, he isn\u2019t even Walter Mondale. But \u201cUnabomber\u201d makes a big deal out of this trivia, so we watch as Murray psychologically tortures young Kaczynski in the name of science, over and over. \u201cUnabomber\u201d director Janus Metz Pedersen tries to make the case that this domestic terrorist\u2019s murder spree began while sitting across a desk from Henry Murray, but the connection is tenuous. No matter how hard Pedersen pushes in the film\u2019s final moments \u2014 and he pushes too hard \u2014 half of \u201cUnabomber\u201d always plays like a Wikipedia footnote in dire need of trimming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tremblay stands out as Kaczynski, effectively conveying the murderer\u2019s intelligence, insecurity and estrangement. It\u2019s thanks to him that we\u2019re swept up, however briefly, in the idea that Kaczynski\u2019s crimes might have been avoidable. Meanwhile, Crowe treats \u201cUnabomber\u201d like a companion piece to last year\u2019s \u201cNuremberg,\u201d the film where he played Nazi war criminal Hermann G\u00f6ring, who was psychoanalyzed while awaiting trial for his crimes against humanity. Crowe seems to enjoy playing smug manipulators and he\u2019s rather good at it.<\/p>\n\n\n
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The other half of \u201cUnabomber\u201d finds Woodley stranded in a screenplay that doesn\u2019t know what to do with her. The film draws obvious parallels between Agent Miller and young Kaczynski, presenting them both as underestimated geniuses who resent their foolish superiors. When Kaczynski shouts at his father, degrading him at the dinner table for acting like he\u2019s smarter than him, it plays a lot like Miller\u2019s many meetings with her supervisors, who can never admit they\u2019re wrong. Eventually both Kaczynski and Miller have to break the rules to achieve their goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The film\u2019s biggest problem? These intangible connections don\u2019t mean much. Kaczynski stands up for himself and becomes a terrorist. Miller never does, but she catches the Unabomber so I guess the message is we should suffer fools gladly. That\u2019s a hard sell. Maybe the point is so-called \u201cexperts\u201d should listen to precocious youths, although one of those youths did become the Unabomber, so that doesn\u2019t track either. There\u2019s a difference between noticing a parallel and following it, and \u201cUnabomber\u201d never gets around to the second part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is \u201cUnabomber\u201d a true crime thriller? A psychological profile? A supervillain origin story? It never decides. What it does best is oversell an anecdote that amounts to almost nothing, while underselling a manhunt that defies narrative convention, which was already hard to make exciting. Two underwhelming halves that don\u2019t add up. Some of the actors work overtime to eke drama out of this material, and composer Marco Beltrami gives 110%, with a memorable and intense score that almost disguises the film\u2019s mediocrities. But in the end there\u2019s no other way to put it: \u201cUnabomber\u201d is a dud.<\/p>\n\n\n
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