That was an excellent one.

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

This isn't a real review of this movie, but I wanted to respond to the reviewer who wanted to know what actually happened after the movie ended. Einhorn eventually got extradited back to the U.S., had another trial in PA in like 2001, represented himself, got convicted again, and was sentenced and is currently serving a life in prison term. For some reason, I thought he had since died, but according to Wikipedia, he is still alive. Wikipedia does have an interesting article on Einhorn and mentions this film. It's a fascinating story, to me, both as a Philadelphian who was here during his legal wrangling to fight extradition and as a lawyer.

I thought the movie a good one, allowing one to imagine the angst the family of a murder victim goes through.What happened after the movie left off: Ira was returned to stand another trial due to a special law passed in Pennsylvania allowing persons convicted in absentia to petition for another trial. In Ira's second trial with him presenting his story of the CIA trying to embarrass him, etc. it took the jury all of two hours to return a guilty verdict. Ira is serving a life sentence at Hautzville prison in PA. It is an interesting study how madmen can hypnotize persons into believing them. Think of, besides the Unicorn, Charles Manson, Adolph Hitler, Jim Jones and, unfortunately, many others with this ability.

After seeing this film and reading that it is a documentary soap based on a 'real case', I asked myself what understanding we have of truth in visual or textual narratives. My first intuition was that in this film there are clichees put together in a stereotype way to tell a story with a conservative political message. Just the counterpiece of the more commonly told (and likewise simplistic) liberal story of the suppressed girl from the province, old fashioned and educated with narrow-minded moralist principles who moves to a urban environment and develops unimagined qualities, gets famous, discovers sex etc. Even if the story told in the "Hunt for the Unicorn-Killer" is "true" in the sense that the director was inspired by an incident with structurally the same facts - the way it is told, is absolutely incredible. Neither of the characters really wins any depth. The motives of the girl to stay with her friend who humiliates her and the motives for the friend to murder her out of jealoucy - even if the film insinuates that he never loved her stay obscure. The question why an explained pacifist kills her girl friend is answered in a too simplistic way, if the film suggests he was only having his ideas to make himself interesting and to seduce girls. I think it is also problematic to make a piece of fiction and pretend it to be real keeping the real names of persons and places. People might no longer distinguish between what was the case and what was just invented to make the plot more interesting. I think truth in narratives is more about cases being representative (even if they are invented) and told in a way sophisticated enough to come close to the complexities of real life. I rate it 1 out of 10.

If you're looking to dissuade your daughters from the fella she adores but you think little of, have her sit through this. Ira Einhorn was a celebrity of the peace / earth movements of the 60s and 70s. Extremely well respected, his peacenik persona cloaked a darker side that hated women and thought very little of anything other than himself and his personal causes. When his long-time girlfriend Holly Maddux decides to leave him, she disappears and eighteen months later her decomposed body is found in a locked trunk in his apartment. Through it all, Ira maintains his innocence, doing his best to convince the world that the American Government set him up, that Holly's murder was done to 'embarrass' him. Out on bail, he flees the country and lives at large in the UK until being caught in the late 90s in France. The French, however, knowing he has been convicted in absentia of Holly's murder and faces life in prison without parole once returned to the US, refuses to extradict him. Apparently, a higher court overturned this decision and he is currently appealing a later order to be sent back. Kevin Anderson and Naomi Watts are superb as the leads; he gives you the shivers as he unveils the layers of a clearly narcissistic sociopath and she, simply, breaks your heart. How many promising young women have you known who fall victim to their own lack of identity and the whims of an abusive lover? Filmed as a tv miniseries, this is a three and a half hour vehicle for victim's rights. While the first half of this is used to set up Ira and Holly's dysfunctional relationship, the perspective of Holly's family, and the anguish they go through in trying to bring their daughter's murderer to justice, takes precedence in the second half. If the evidence weren't so damning against Ira Einhorn, this would be just another manipulative movie of the week (however well acted). As it is, it leaves the viewer haunted by the possibilities of a life brutally extinguished and infuriated by the fact that justice is continually skirted by the one person responsible for the crime.