The calm, measured tones of Luke Kirby’s voice as Ted Bundy are first heard in No Man of God on a recording of one of many interviews conducted by FBI agent Bill Hagmaier in the early days of the Bureau’s profiling unit, established to unlock the psychology of serial murderers and rapists.
In a movie that’s basically about two men sitting on opposite sides of a table in a prison interrogation room discussing the most horrific premeditated crimes, the fear triggered in women is an effective motif.
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The main action, however, jumps back four years earlier, when the Ronald Reagan administration had established the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime.
What makes the performance of Kirby so transfixing is that he keeps the viewer questioning — almost to the end — whether Bundy is manipulating Hagmaier or sincerely values him as a friend after their years of regular interviews.
The phenomenon of the serial murderer that once occupied significant space in the dark recesses of the American psyche has since been largely replaced by the almost weekly occurrence of the mass shooting.
There’s also pathos in Hagmaier’s failure to be able to be there for Bundy in his final moments, thanks to the power play of the prison warden shines further light on the Federal agent’s fundamental decency.
Wood also serves as a producer, and the only drawback with his work here — which I’ll admit might be a purely personal response — is that like so many actors indelibly associated with one particular role, it’s not always easy to accept Frodo Baggins as an ambitious FBI agent with a sharp analytical mind and a complex moral conscience who would go on to head the unit.
Reservations aside, this remains an engrossing drama, focusing not on the gruesome details of the 30 or more murders of young women and children committed by Bundy but on his state of mind during those final years when his life was in limbo.
Does it add major insights to the canon of films already out there — most recently the Zac Efron vehicle Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, and the Netflix documentary series Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, both directed by Joe Berlinger — dealing with this figure who continues to loom large in the annals of American true-crime infamy more than three decades after his death? That’s debatable.