Review: No Man of God Is a Sub-Mindhunter Grapple with the Mind of Ted Bundy

Between Joe Berlinger’s Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile and Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, Trish Wood’s docuseries Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer, and Daniel Farrands’s upcoming Ted Bundy: American Boogeyman, Ted Bundy is suddenly ubiquitous. Now, with No Man of God, director Amber Sealey and writer Kit Lesser focus on the final years of his incarceration on death row, framing their examination into one of the most heinous criminals of the 20th century as a theatricalized series of conversations between Bundy (Luke Kirby) and F.B.I. Agent Bill Hagmaier (Elijah Wood).

No Man of God begins in 1984, with Hagmaier introduced as one of the first F.B.I. profilers under the newly created National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, and as such the film instantly brings to mind Mindhunter. Under the direction of Unit Chief Roger Depue (Robert Patrick), the organization’s first order of business is to conduct interviews with incarcerated killers in order to gain valuable insights into criminal conduct. Hagmaier chooses to profile Bundy, despite his colleagues’ skepticism that the death row inmate will say anything of worth to the feds, and eventually becomes one of his closest confidantes.

Kirby looks the part of an aging Bundy, eerily affecting the man’s quiet demeanor and narcissism, which bring a prickly edge to the film’s interview scenes. And with his wide-eyed boyishness, Wood renders Hagmaier as a man who initially suggests the slithery Bundy’s moral opposite, but as committed as the performers are, the lack of much novel insight into a killer whose contradictions and deceits have been extensively documented throughout the decades begins to make No Man of God come off like a glorified acting exercise.

At one point, Bundy explains that he’s willing to talk because he appreciates that Hagmaier “just wants to understand,” a sentiment repeated ad nauseam by both men. But in attempting to do so, the film rather conventionally shuttles through the expected ethical dilemmas of this situation, with Hagmaier working to read between Bundy’s lies while reckoning with the fact that he may be developing a genuine rapport with a cold-blooded psychopath.

One point of interest that No Man of God does hit on is Bundy’s valid assertion that all men have the capacity to harm women. But other than the dramatic moment where Bundy coaxes Hagmaier into acknowledging that they share the same primal urges and that their positions could easily be reversed, the exploration of the misogyny that drove Bundy to kill mostly falls short of its potential. Even the late introduction of Bundy’s female lawyer, Carolyn Lieberman (Aleksa Palladino), is mostly used as a third-act plot device by the filmmakers to complicate Hagmaier’s profiling procedures. And Lieberman’s eventual admission that she hates her client is less a powerful declaration of her inner turmoil than a gateway to another opportunity for Hagmaier to continue brooding over his own mixed emotions for Ted.

As his execution date draws nearer and Bundy frantically tries to buy more time by courting the press, No Man of God approaches a degree of introspection about how the real victims of these crimes are being lost in the ballooning media circus. In his final TV interview with Focus on the Family evangelist James Dobson (Christian Clemenson), the camera lingers on the face of a female production assistant (Hannah Jessup) as she’s visibly affected by Bundy’s every utterance. It’s a moment that perfectly registers the greater trauma felt by women all over America who were constantly forced to see the face of a sadistic abuser on TV screens and newspapers for years after he was caught. It’s unfortunate, then, that No Man of God settles right back into its blandly familiar groove right after, losing sight of the very real horrors of the Bundy saga in order to position him as just another Hannibal Lecter-esque movie monster.