Ted K

Loved the veer away from the 'American cop show' approach, letting us uncomfortably live in Ted's environment. Sharlto Copeley is excellent, believable and disturbing. Arthouse style, assumes a knowledge, loved 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.

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.

It's a great story and great character, but done with a very weak approach, just terrible editing with a mix of crossfades and alternating sequences with no substance or meaning, like the classic cliché of using slow-motion for explosions. It's very repetitive with scenes showing the damage being done to the mountains and the noise pollution or the phone conversations he has with his brother. Also the music goes all over the place, it doesn't have a solid approach, only in the last part of the film it seems to stick to a synthesizer that doesn't really fit at all. I mean, in a way it builds tension, but if this is Ted's point of view (and it is because we experience his fantasies as real as he does) he would probably be against using machines to make music. All this shows there's no particular direction or sensitivity, no point of view, no depth. I think that without all these effects and post-production paraphernalia it could be a very powerful film. Sharlto Copley is amazing, but the film doesn't really let him shine. The best scene is probably when he goes to the phone company to make a complaint. Maybe a more organic and natural approach with the music and a minimalist editing or camera work could also make the film better.

The screenplay was terrible - it felt like it got lost trying to figure out if it wants to be a documentary or a movie. Tony Stone's directing made matters worse with very little substance and a whole lot of filler to fill in the run-time. The endless NatGeo scenes of nature, animals and wilderness just bored me and was all irrelevant to the story. Ya we get it, he's an off-grid guy. Then, all the interesting parts - the guts of Ted K's story, were weak, too short and lacked much needed insight and impact. This all could've just been condensed into a 20-30 min short docu-story. Aside from Sharlto Copley's decent performance, this film was a boring sloth and rather pointless.