McAfee is introduced with his considerably-youthful girlfriend Sam (who is interviewed later), ahead of the narrative abandons that part of the story about midway by, choosing up with McAfee all over again about five a long time afterwards, in 2019, as he lurches from a single crisis to the upcoming.
Russell evidently needs to use the grainy footage and up-near-and-particular exposure to McAfee’s ramblings to replicate a sense of the man himself, but there is only so significantly that can go with no weaving additional helpful context into the combine. In its place, “Operating With the Satan” detours to notify the tales of these who adopted McAfee about, which adds minimal to the greater plot beyond delivering a short term respite from McAfee’s lunacy.
In the latter portion of the movie, the roster of kind-of narrators expands to include Alex Cody Foster, a self-explained ghostwriter who hung out with McAfee and recorded intensive interviews with him.
“It’s possible he was a murderer, but I just appreciate fantastic stories,” Foster says.
McAfee was plainly a lot of items, and certainly, a assassin could have been one particular of them. “Working With the Satan” can be forgiven for opting not to trouble bogging down a juicy yarn by wrestling with the morality of the man, but as presented, it is merely much too substantially of a mess to even qualify as a good tale.
“Jogging With the Satan: The World of John McAfee” premieres Aug. 24 on Netflix.