Russell Crowe Shines in Unabomber - Film Falters, Sadly

You expect a true-crime picture to grip you from the first frame. Unabomber does that at times. Then it lets go. Fast. The film arrives with a high-profile cast—Russell Crowe, Shailene Woodley, Jacob Tremblay and Annabelle Wallis—and the messy real-life story of Ted Kaczynski at its center, but the result feels at once familiar and oddly unfinished.

Directed by Janus Metz Pedersen and written by Sam Chalsen and Nelson Greaves, Unabomber aims to be a crime drama that charts the hunt, the profiling and the moral questions around one of America’s most notorious domestic terrorism cases. The filmmakers lean into procedural detail and character beats. They also try to humanize, to explain, to dramatize—sometimes clumsily.

Critics have been blunt. Rotten Tomatoes lists 32 reviews and a Tomatometer of 19%. Metacritic collects 16 critiques and sits at 46/100. Those numbers tell the headline: the film has not won critics over. But the scene-level reality is more complicated. Small moments work. Performances work. The structure does not.

What reviewers highlight most is Crowe. He anchors scenes with a sly, watchful intensity that often lifts otherwise flat stretches. Jacob Tremblay brings jagged energy to a tense role. Shailene Woodley, cast as FBI analyst Joan Miller and tasked with steering the investigation, is frequently singled out as the film’s steady hand—even by reviewers who find the script wanting.

Still, many critics point to the movie’s weaknesses. Some fault a split-timeline approach that fragments momentum; others say the film settles for familiar flashback shorthand when the subject’s psychology deserves nuance. There’s an argument here about responsibility: when you dramatize a real person and a real trail of violence, do you present ambiguity or tidy answers? Unabomber opts for clarity where history keeps questions open.

Press reactions run the gamut. A few reviewers praise the technical craft and a handful of powerful scenes. Others call for a bolder, more probing treatment—one that would dig deeper into how and why Kaczynski became radicalized and how the manhunt actually unfolded. Some specifically criticize the film for smoothing over clinical and historical uncertainties around mental health in favor of dramatic closure.

Russell Crowe's performance is the film's heartbeat, even when the script forgets to pulse. That single fact makes Unabomber worth a look for fans of serious acting. But if you arrive hoping for a definitive new take on the Unabomber saga, you may leave wishing the filmmakers had pushed harder.

Ultimately this is a movie of strong parts and shaky composition: striking performances nested inside a structure that often undercuts their impact. Watch it for the actors. Debate it for its choices. Then decide where you stand.