Running with the Devil: The Wild World of John McAfee (2022)

Movie Info

Who is the real John McAfee (and do I care?)

John McAfee is on the run.  Accused of murdering his next door neighbor Greg Faull in Belize in 2012, he’s contacted filmmakers at Vice to chronicle his escape.  When McAfee reaches Guatemala, things change, and McAfee continues to keep ahead of the authorities.  Is McAfee being targeted or is he a murderer or is he a victim of being a target of big government who wants to silence McAfee forever?

Directed by Charlie Russell, Running with the Devil:  The Wild World of John McAfee is a true-crime documentary.  The film covers the running (and death) of John McAfee (September 18, 1945-June 23, 2021).  The documentary premiered on Netflix on August 24, 2022.

I kind of avoided the whole McAfee story when it was unravelling.  It was a crazy story involving the guy who created the program protecting many computers.  I remember hearing about it more around McAfee’s death…but the real story is weirder than even expected.

Say what you will, at least the Miami prostitute girlfriend was maybe the only honest person in the documentary

The movie is a whole bunch of egos exploding. It is a bunch of armchair quarterbacks talking about events after they happened.  The movie starts out with the filmmakers from Vice thinking they are controlling the project, but in reality, McAfee is deciding how the story will be told (and leaves them in the dust when it gets dangerous in Guatemala).  The movie exposes events as they happen, but it doesn’t really dig into the events that spurred the crisis (aka the murder of  Greg Faull).  It just treats McAfee as an enigmatic character instead of investigating if he is a murderer.

McAfee’s ego keeps getting in the way.  Was he targeted?  It doesn’t appear to matter because he thinks more of himself than anyone else.  He makes a spectacle of himself in the documentary and seems to like the attention under the guise of making himself more public to protect himself.  He comes off as a jerk, a womanizer, and most likely a murderer.  The movie doesn’t really help his cause despite trying to throw back the idea that he was targeted for murder because of the secrets he holds.

Dead or alive, McAfee likes the attention

The movie is interesting in that it feels kind of guerilla.  The movie unfolds as it unfolded for cameras.  A lot of the footage is McAfee spouting pseudointellectual garbage, but it is in real time which makes it interesting.  I don’t particularly care for what McAfee says…but the fact that it is happening in real time is what’s interesting.  He digs his own hole in the documentary.

Running with the Devil:  The Wild World of John McAfee has appeal in that it is happening as it is being told.  Not that I wish ill on anyone, but McAfee comes off as a real jerk and as much as he wants to think he’s being targeted, it feels like he brings a lot of the punishment down on himself.  The true issues of the documentary (aka did McAfee kill Gregory Faull) seems to get pushed under the rug in dealing with McAfee’s big persona…which is a shame because it feels like there is a good murder mystery there.