How does a Harvard prodigy become one of the most hunted men in American history? Unabomber, directed by Janus Metz, with Russell Crowe as Professor Henry Murray and Jacob Tremblay as the young Kaczynski, traces Ted Kaczynski's path across decades, from a university laboratory to a federal manhunt.
What is Unabomber about?
Two timelines pull against each other. In the earlier one, a gifted young mathematician at Harvard is drawn into psychological experiments run by Professor Henry Murray, sessions that leave marks nobody at the time thinks to measure. In the later one, FBI agent Joanne Miller leads the search for the bomber whose attacks have made the name Unabomber a national byword for fear. What connects the two threads is the question the film keeps returning to: how much of what happened later was already set in motion in that laboratory. Metz treats the back-story as portrait and keeps the manhunt itself comparatively brief, letting ambition and isolation emerge as the two forces that shaped a brilliant mind into something destructive. The approach is restrained rather than sensational, and the film's hundred-odd minutes are spent far more on the origins of the violence than on the pursuit itself.
About the cast
Russell Crowe anchors the film as Professor Henry Murray, with Jacob Tremblay as the young Ted Kaczynski, Shailene Woodley as FBI agent Joanne Miller, and Annabelle Wallis, Alexander Ludwig, Marc Menchaca, Steven Ogg and Mark Camacho completing the ensemble. The casting spans generations, which suits a story that moves between a young man's formative years and the adult consequences. Janus Metz directs, and the film's structure gives each generation of the cast its own stretch of the story.
Context & significance
Catalogued under Drama, Thriller and Crime, Unabomber is a 2026 American production built around a real case that has been revisited in print and on screen many times. What distinguishes this telling, judging by its premise, is the weight it gives to the Harvard experiments and to the idea that institutions can damage the people they claim to study. The film is not a documentary; it dramatises the material and names its central figures, Kaczynski, Murray and Miller, as characters within a scripted narrative. Viewers interested in true-crime storytelling that asks about origins rather than simply recounting events will find that the film's structure is designed for exactly that question.
Watching Unabomber on Ktime
Unabomber is available on K-Time with a Persian dub and Persian subtitles, so you can choose Farsi audio or the original English with Farsi text. A K-Time account login is required to watch; reading this page costs nothing. The platform offers a Farsi-first interface built for the Iranian diaspora, and the film can be found among the catalogue's crime and thriller titles.