Review: Unabomber

Official Synopsis: A Harvard student (Jacob Tremblay) becomes the Unabomber after psychological experiments. Years later, an FBI agent's (Shailene Woodley) pursuit reveals how his past shaped his deadly campaign that killed 3 and injured 23 from 1978-1995.

True Crime is basically Netflix's bread and butter at this point. There's 100's of documentaries, a new TV show centered around a criminal every year. While most get the mini series format, Unabomber stands out as a single film. I'm not sure who was asking for a film based on this particular psycho, but Russell Crowe, Shailene Woodley and Jacob Tremblay were enough to get me to watch. Especially when I didn't have to leave my couch.

This film doesn't have anything particularly interesting to say. Its strongest points are when it's being a detective story. Woodley is very engaging as an FBI agent trying to do the right thing when none of her male colleagues listen to her. They are practically caricatures, but you can't deny that Woodley is just good in this type of role. Even though I love mysteries, I wasn't expecting that part of the film to be the strongest. I was expecting some sparring between Crowe and Tremblay, which doesn't really happen.

Not that this guy needed to be platformed, but I don't feel like I learned much about the Unabomber at all. Tremblay is very good playing him through his angry, awkward teen years but he's mostly parroting other people's philosophies and all those scenes of him during the experiments felt like they should've had more weight. I couldn't help but think of The Stanford Prison Experiment and how harrowing those scenes of the teenagers were during their experiments. I guess I felt like this film was going to go  for the same intensity, but it didn't. 

This isn't a bad film by any means, it's just not very interesting. Reliable actors turn in reliable performances and nothing more. Thankfully, this is a Netflix movie so you can put it on without having to feel like you wasted your time. 

Grade: C