Christina Reviews *The Deliberate Stranger*

           There have been many movies to chronicle the life and times of Ted Bundy.  This is probably my favorite of the ones I’ve seen, and maybe the most in-depth.  Mark Harmon does well playing pretty-boy Bundy.  It's easy to see why Ted Bundy was so well-liked, if he was anything like the way Mark Harmon played him.  Of course, there were flashes here and there of his true self.  The movie dropped clues.  Like when he snaps at his girlfriend and her daughter.  Like when a girl rebukes him and, after she walks away, he slams his fist against the hood of his car.  Like when he went to a barbeque and these two female friends of his turn to him, and one says, shocked, "You're a Republican."  :)

          Seriously, though, the great thing about this movie, other than the fact that Mark Harmon did a better job playing Ted Bundy than most actors have in the past, is the fact that the movie really gives depth to the victims.  So many serial killer flicks kind of neglect the victims in order to focus on the killer or the investigation, but this movie is four hours long and that allows for plenty of time to develop the characters.  I’m not suggesting that the victims were given a build-up worthy of David Copperfield or Great Expectations, but there’s a scene where the mother of Denise Naslund is talking about her daughter, and I appreciated even just that small acknowledgment of what the victims went through.  All too often, we hear about all the little details of the killer’s life and don’t even learn the victims’ names.   In fact, right in the beginning, the narrator states that the Ted Bundy nightmare was one that lasted from 1974 until 1979 "for most of us."  The narrator goes on to acknowledge that it lasted beyond 1979 for the families who were impacted, and how this movie is about them as well.  Of course, some of the names were changed.  So this is still a somewhat fictionalized account of the true story.  And the movie is still mainly about Ted Bundy.  But the movie has heart to it that most serial killer movies don't.

       I hated the tagline, though:  "He was easy to like.  Deadly to Know.  Tough to Catch."  He wasn't deadly to know.  In fact, you were safer if you did know him.  That was the whole point of the title.  Clearly the tagline was written by someone who hadn't seen the movie and only wanted to come up with a clever hook.