During his final years on death row, Ted Bundy (Luke Kirby) agrees to meet with FBI Agent Bill Hagmaier (Elijah Wood) for a series of interviews to help inform the newly formed Behavioral Analysis Unit of the minds of some of the greatest criminals of that time.  The two quickly find a mutual understanding and keep their conversations tied to topics of psychology and life instead of just the crimes for which Bundy was accused.  After his death order is signed by a judge, Bundy shares some of the more intimate details about his crimes with Hagmaier in an effort to clear his conscience and to be understood by the world he will leave behind. 

No Man of God is a densely scripted drama written by Kit Lesser.  It is a strange script as, despite its word count, it manages to be both laser-focused on its subject and broadly sweeping at the same time.  It is a two-hander that plays out like a far more disturbing and less elegant version of My Dinner with Andre (1981) for the better half of the film.  The individual scenes are all well written, but unfortunately as a whole the script flounders and does not present its ideas very well.  The purpose behind the film is not clear – it does not operate well as a biopic of Hagmaier nor does it really do much to inform us of Bundy’s enduring legacy as one of the most prolific serial killers in American history. 

The film still manages to work as its two leads, Kirby and Wood, have great chemistry together when they are in the interview sessions.  Kirby is menacing in the role, and the hair and makeup team manage to make him look remarkably similar to Bundy in his later years.  The script allows the two men to open up to each other as their trust grows, but the performances all stay rather levelheaded.  They both speak in the same tone for the duration of the film and there is very little variation in their performance style.  While they do work well together on screen, this lack of texture or variety makes the film drag on at points.   

As the film continues, No Man of God subtlety asks the audience its major ethical question: are criminals, specifically serial offenders, worthy of humanization?  There is no clear answer, and do not expect to find your answer as the credits roll, either, but it would work well in a classroom setting as a jumping off point.  As the relationship grows between Bundy and Hagmaier, it is impossible to not realize the engineering as work behind the film and start to question if we are becoming sympathetic towards Bundy and if the film is glamorizing him. 

Crime has been a favored topic of cinema for as long as the industry was in existence, and our relationship to crime is undoubtably influenced by is glamorization on the silver screen.  When is it melded into the context of a biopic is when the true ethics questions come into play.  Can we still revile Kirby’s Bundy while we celebrate, for example, Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (1991)?  There are obvious parallels between the two, especially in the interviewing scenes, and both of their respective films seek to show the men as more than just monstrous killers.  Without lessening the actual loss of life caused by Bundy,  is it enough to say that because Lecter operates in an entirely fictional universe that the atrocities which he commits therein are somehow less than the violence that can be portrayed in a biopic?  We still need to recognize that Lecter’s intentions are all presented clear as day, and as the character is an agglomeration of different real-life serial killers, those motivations line up eerily similar to those of any true crime story.  Whether it is in a work of fiction or based on real events, we need to – at the very least – be aware of our fetishization of violence in popular culture. 

That the film shies away from engaging with this question in any real detail is the most frustrating part about the whole thing.  It introduces us to these questions, especially in the third act with Rev. Lawrence’s (Doug Cox) interview that asks us to examine celebrity status as it relates to serial killers.  After spending 100 minutes with the film, we are no closer to an answer than when we began, and it feels wholly unfulfilling and like a missed opportunity to have great dialogue about our relation to true crime stories.  

For what it lacks in substance, however, No Man of God is a well-crafted, tense thriller from director, Amber Sealey.  She moves her camera rather adeptly through the tight interrogation room that hosts the majority of the film’s scenes.  She does get a little overeager with her setups using some of the more creative framing in the first series of interviews, though this also helps us stay at a distance from Bundy as he and Hagmaier are still sizing each other up.  As their relationship grows, the camera becomes more generous in what it shows us during the sessions, but the setups become more and more of a traditional A/B setup that becomes sluggish to watch ad nauseam. 

No Man of God is a film that, while competently made, fails to deliver on many of the things it is trying to setup.  A strong effort by all involved, it seems to lack a commitment to its own thesis and therefore accomplishes nothing.  With a little more clarity of purpose, this could have been a very strong film, but it collapses under the weight of its own premise.  It is worth the watch, especially for followers of true crime, but do not expect to come away with any new knowledge or insight into the Bundy case or of Hagmaier as a criminal profiler.