Russell Crowe has spent his career playing men of great force and strange obsessions, but his latest Netflix outing has not gone down well with the public. Unabomber, the new biopic thriller starring Crowe as Henry Murray, a psychologist who studied Ted Kaczynski at Harvard, has earned a 32% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. That makes it Crowe’s third-lowest-rated movie among his Netflix work, tied with 1995’s Virtuosity.
The film, streaming now, tells two stories at once. One timeline follows Kaczynski’s time at Harvard, where he became a test subject for Murray. The other follows his later years as a domestic terrorist. Critics found the structure a mess, and the audience agreed.
Crowe’s Long Road to Netflix
Crowe has never been shy about big parts, but this is his first lead role on the streamer. He previously showed up in Brad Pitt’s War Machine as a cameo, uncredited. Now he plays Murray, the man who studied the man who became the Unabomber.
The film arrives after a busy year for Crowe. The Weight and Beast earned positive reviews, while Get Out and Unabomber did not. The pattern is clear: Crowe can still carry a picture, but the script has to be sharper than this one was.
The Structure Problem
The film’s biggest complaint is its two-timeline approach. Reviews described the pacing as uneven and boring, and the audience score reflects that judgment. The film tries to balance Murray’s Harvard work with Kaczynski’s later crimes, and the result never quite lands.
Shailene Woodley plays an FBI character in the film, but she is a gender-swapped version of a real figure. That choice drew criticism over historical accuracy. The film is not the first to handle this story, and the comparison to a previous version is stark.
A Better Version Already Exists
Discovery Channel’s 2017 series Manhunt covered the same ground. Paul Bettany played the Unabomber, and Sam Worthington played the real-life FBI profiler Jim “Fitz” Fitzgerald. Critics and audiences both loved it, giving it a 93% Tomatometer and a 92% audience score.
Netflix acquired the rights and is now streaming the series alongside Unabomber. The contrast could not be clearer: a small-screen docudrama that worked, and a big-budget feature that did not.
What Went Wrong
The film’s critical reception was mixed to negative. Its Tomatometer score sits at 22%, which is a low mark for any Crowe-led project. The audience score tracks that, settling at 32%.
The problems were structural. The two timelines never meshed, and the pacing suffered for it. Crowe and Tremblay delivered strong performances, but that was not enough to save the film.
The Supporting Cast
Janus Metz Pedersen directed the film. Sam Chalsen and Nelson Greaves wrote the script. Sophie Cassidy produced. The cast includes Annabelle Wallis, Alexander Ludwig, Steven Off, Marc Menchaca, and Gus Halper.
That is a solid group, and it is hard to blame any of them for the final result. The blame falls on the screenplay and the direction, not the people in front of and behind the camera.
Crowe’s Next Moves
Crowe is one of the busiest actors in Hollywood right now. His return to the historical genre, The Last Druid, is expected to arrive in mid-2027. Billion Dollar Spy is in post-production.
He will also reunite with Man of Steel star Henry Cavill in the Highlander reboot, playing Ramírez, the character previously played by Sean Connery. That project is shaping up to be a bigger draw than Unabomber ever was.
The Audience Response
The film’s audience score is a measure of how viewers responded, not how many of them saw it. Crowe’s fans may watch for the performances, but the structure kept them from enjoying the ride.
A Flop Among Crowe’s Netflix Work
Crowe has appeared in a number of Netflix films over the years, and Unabomber joins a short list of disappointments. The 22% critic score and 32% audience score put it near the bottom of that list, tied with Virtuosity.
The film is streaming now, and it is easy to see why it failed. The two-timeline structure was a disaster, and the gender-swapped FBI character added a layer of inaccuracy that reviewers flagged.
The Verdict on Crowe’s Netflix Debut
Crowe has had a long career, and he has been in some of the most memorable pictures of the past few decades. Gladiator remains a standout, and his work in recent years has been steady even when it has not been great.
Unabomber is the exception. It is a forgettable entry in a career full of memorable ones.
The film is streaming on Netflix, and the verdict is in. Crowe’s third-lowest audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is a record he does not want to hold.
Key Facts
– Audience Score: 32%
– Tomatometer Score: 22%
– Tied With: 1995’s Virtuosity
– Release Date: September 25, 2026
– Runtime: 97 minutes
– Director: Janus Metz Pedersen
– Writers: Nelson Greaves, Sam Chalsen
– Producers: Sophie Cassidy
Crowe’s Recent Netflix Slate
– The Weight — positive reviews
– Beast — positive reviews
– Get Out — poorly received
– Unabomber — poorly received
Crowe’s next projects include The Last Druid (mid-2027), Billion Dollar Spy (in post-production), and the Highlander reboot with Cavill. None of those carry the weight of Unabomber, and none need to.
The film is a reminder that even a great actor needs a great script. Crowe can fill a screen, but he cannot fix a broken one. Unabomber is a missed opportunity, a film that tried to do too much at once and ended up doing neither half well.
“Critics and audiences agree that Unabomber suffers from the two-timeline structure, which made the pacing uneven and boring.”
See the video the story is built around at Screen Rant.
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