Ted K

What did I just watch?!? This was absolutely awful. I don't understand how there can be any positive reviews for this movie. Everything about it was weird and awful. There was not one positive thing I can say about it. I want these two hours of my life back. The acting, the music, and just everything about it seemed so off. It is so different from anything I've ever read or seen about the unabomber and not in a good way. I've seen lots of compliments about the lead actor in this movie and I just don't get it. I really disliked watching him. If you have the choice between watching this or Manhunt unabomber, watch that instead. It's so much better.

Being a true crime fan and having seen several documentaries about the unabomber I was looking forward to seeing this movie. After the opening credits, and given the initial approach I thought I would be in the presence of an intimate film. An "Author's Film". And this biography has everything to make that happen. But in my opinion the film falls into too many elements that have little to do with the nature of Ted himself as well as his odyssey. Even chronologically. I think the film would be more effective if it had an unknown actor. Although technically the film is excellent, highlighting the photography, although the soundtrack is also very adequate, the truth is that seeing the film as a whole, one gets the feeling that in reality, this could have been another film that "could have been" . Anyway good but not excellent.

The Unabomber was coming up with fascinating ideas on society from as early as the 1970's and as time goes by, those ideas become more prescient and more true. So, how does this film go about exploring these great insights into society? How does this film explore the intellect of its subject? The sad answer is, it ignores it.

Ted K, was a fantastic opportunity to do something intellectually stimulating, but for some reason, a choice was made to ignore the intelligence and make the story about a crazy hobo who lives in the forest, struggles with sexual frustration and makes mail bombs because he can't find a girlfriend.

If I were conspiratorial, I could easily imagine the powerful overlords of our society were getting so worried about people reading the Unabomber's manifesto, that they set out to destroy his character by making this film.

The film is competently produced and Sharlto Copley's performance is strong; the problem is the approach. This film didn't attempt to study Ted Kaczynski's character, they set out to assassinate it.

I've previously watched the excellent series Manhunt: Unabomber so felt compelled to see this through. It's factual but very very slow and light on detail about Ted K's targets and focusses far too much on his backwoodsman lifestyle imo.

Nevertheless a fascinating story about the largest manhunt in FBI history even though we get to see very little of it.

Greetings again from the darkness. It's been more than 25 years since The Unabomber was arrested. The composite sketch of Theodore John Kaczynski wearing sunglasses and a hoodie became an iconic image on its own, and he was the target of the longest and most expensive manhunt in the history of the FBI. There have already been two crime series focused on Kaczynski. Netflix aired "Unabomber: In His Own Words" (2020) and Discovery had "Manhunt: Unabomber" (2017). Do we need to know more about this monster whose bombs killed 3 people and injured 22 others over a 17-year period? Well, writer-director Tony Stone and co-writers Gaddy Davis and John Rosenthal believe so.

A prologue with text details most of what we already know - Kaczynski was a Harvard educated math genius who dropped out of society and moved to the Rocky Mountains in Montana. Following that, the opening sequence sets the stage as we see Kaczynski hiding in the forest eyeing a family zipping around on snow mobiles. This is all accompanied by Blanck Mass music that falls into the category I call 'doom-droning'. It's ominous music so blatant that no one could possibly think anything good is about to happen. And of course, nothing good does happen.

Sharlto Copley (DISTRICT 9, 2009) stars as Kaczynski, and if there is a complaint to be made against this movie, it's that Copley's performance is so strong that we begin to see this monster as a human being. Living 25 years in a ten by twelve-foot backwoods cabin he built with his brother, Kaczynski doesn't make the case for nature vs nurture, but rather nature vs tech intrusions. He seems mostly fine in his isolation until disturbed by the seasonal snow mobiles, four-wheelers, jet noise, or ongoing lumber harvesting. Of course, he was never really fine. He was a sexually frustrated misogynist who became a dysfunctional and delusional and dangerous man. In a voiceover, he states, "I act merely for my desire for revenge."

Much of the film is pulled directly from the 25,000 pages of coded journals found in the cabin. The deluded thoughts of a man who considered modern technology to be evil and used a hit list to identify the targets for his homemade bombs ... bombs that often injured unintended victims. Copley plays him as a wide-eyed guy with the expected undercurrent of intelligence masked by one so unhinged he personally delivers his complaint letter to the customer service desk of the phone company - over a few dimes and quarters lost over time.

The film was shot on location on the Montana land owned by Kaczynski. The cabin has been expertly recreated and cinematographer Nathan Corbin does a terrific job in catching the beauty of nature, as well as the elements that so bothered Kaczynski. Frequently wearing sunglasses and riding his bicycle into town to visit the library, we also see him listening to classical music on the radio - and begging his mother and brother (the one who tipped off the FBI) for money (to finance his bombing trips). The film is well written, professionally directed, expertly photographed, and well performed. However, I can't shake the uneasiness over whether we really want to see one of our most unconscionable monsters humanized to this degree.

In theaters and On Demand beginning February 18, 2022.