Ted K (2021)

Ted K’s unforgivable sin is that it is too much like its subject, and both are in dire need of a moral compass. The movie presents Ted Kaczynski as a deranged, sexually frustrated, hygienically challenged, cabin-fevered, you-kids-get-off-my-lawn humorless crazy old coot type – so one can’t very well say that co-writer/director Tony Stone (as far as I can tell not related to Oliver, though judging from this film he clearly wishes he were) is glamorizing him; this is by no means the kind of person in whose company you’d want to spend any more time than necessary, even if he weren’t a homicidal maniac. And yet, Stone devotes two hours (this is as bloated and masturbatory an exercise as the “25,000 pages” of lunatic ravings on which it is based) to following this creep around. We see him seethe, sulk, and rant against women and technology, we watch him scheme and plot, in short, we witness him at work – and while Roger Ebert once correctly noted that “Actual work is more interesting than most plots”, he meant honest work, of which Kaczynski, Ph.D. and all, can’t even manage the simplest of manual labors. Two hours of this with no more than a passing moment’s thought given to Kaczynski’s victims, which are kept at the same distance and regarded with the same detachment as Kaczynski did, essentially making the movie as cowardly as he is. We see some of the bombings but none of the aftermath, effectively telling us that his crimes were virtually victimless. So the film may not glorify Kaczynski, but it doesn’t condemn him either; it places him in a solipsistic vacuum wherein his actions are tacitly justified. Similarly, what we are briefly told was “the largest manhunt in FBI history” is handled as a mere afterthought. It’s not hyperbole when I say that seldom do you see a movie with its priorities as screwed up as Ted K. The manhunt, that’s your movie. The victims, those are your characters. And the killer, caught only in glimpses until finally properly caught. The Highwaymen understood this a couple of years ago, and that’s why, even as it – like most movies do – falls short technically, it is, story-wise, vastly superior to Bonnie and Clyde. What a thankless role Sharlto Copley got himself into. Not only does his performance come across as the sort of Charles Manson-wannabe that Jeremy Davies used to be able to do in his sleep, but is stuck front and center in every single scene with a character for whom relatability is all but impossible; I mean, I think it’s pretty safe to say that most of us have resisted the urge to kill a nosy neighbor, whereas Kaczynski can’t keep his bloodlust in check even after moving to the middle of nowhere.