Plot: A true-crime thriller about the trailblazing reporters who broke the story of the notorious Boston Strangler murders of the 1960s.
Review: The notorious serial killer known as The Boston Strangler is a case that captivated the world in the 1960s and spawned a film almost fifty years ago starring Tony Curtis as Albert DeSalvo. In the decades since DeSalvo’s confession and trial, theories have emerged that the Boston murders could have been committed by multiple killers, of which DeSalvo can only be concretely linked to one. This new film from writer/director Matt Ruskin chronicles the quest of two reporters to help stop the Strangler and gives context to the city of Boston as it was on edge for years as the killer brutally dispatched women of all ages. With a solid lead from Keira Knightley, this intriguing drama emulates David Fincher’s Zodiac while not capturing the same intensity level as similar true crime stories. Boston Strangler is an interesting look at a vile murder story told through the guise of the woman who defied expectations to try and solve it.
Boston Strangler centers on Loretta McLaughlin (Kiera Knightley), a reporter relegated to articles on women’s issues when all she wants is to tackle a substantial crime story. Taking a cue from fellow reporter Jean Cole (Carrie Coon), Loretta pieces together some clues that connect several strangulations that featured the victim sporting stockings tied in a fanciful way around their necks. When editor Jack MacLaine (Chris Cooper) realizes the scoop, he puts Loretta and Jean on the case, much to the chagrin of Police Commissioner McNamara (Bill Camp). As the news breaks, the killings continue, and Loretta befriends Detective Conley (Alessandro Nivola). She soon realizes that the police are not stopping the murderer, leaving Loretta’s family open to potential retribution from Boston cops. As tensions rise at work and home with her husband (Morgan Spector), Loretta must choose between her career, her family, and her personal moral values. It is an intriguing character study that does not quite plumb the depths as it could.
Drawing from the serial killer perspective of Zodiac and the journalist vantage of Spotlight, Boston Strangler spends more time on the fallout of the murder investigation than it does on the brutal crimes themselves. For much of the film, we experience the murders through crime scene photographs or the moments immediately before the crimes are committed. The heinous acts are never shown on screen, but the constant potential to witness these atrocities keeps you on edge when every new victim is shown. Writer/director Matt Ruskin also highlights the fear McLaughlin experiences in the form of crank calls and strangers around her home, and risky leads that put her directly into harm’s way. Keira Knightley never succumbs to portraying McLaughlin as a damsel in distress, while the story continues to address how her gender became a bias she continually had to overcome.
While a competently made film, Boston Strangler buries the lede, something that would have been a big issue for the journalists chronicled in this tale. Prior adaptations of this true crime story have placed Albert DeSalvo squarely as the murderer despite recent decades shedding more light on alternate suspects and the potential that it may not have been a lone serial killer. This film spends the bulk of the first ninety minutes focused on the struggle even to have the multiple victims connected to one another before shifting to finding a suspect. The final act rushes the theory of who the Strangler could really have been. The film also condenses the timeline of the actual events significantly, making it difficult to figure out how long and tense this period was in the Boston area. This also undermines the accomplishments of McLaughlin and Jean Cole by making it seem as if their success in reporting the Boston Strangler murders was maligned from the outset.
With four independent films to his credit, Matt Ruskin has his biggest project to date with Boston Strangler. With Ridley Scott on board as a producer, this would have easily been a theatrical release a decade ago. At many times, Boston Strangler feels like the old-school drama films about reporters from decades past but one that never quite captures the journalism side of things nor the crime side as much as it could. This is a shame because everyone in the cast is really good, especially Knightley, Coon, and Chris Cooper. Alessandro Nivola and Morgan Spector are given such small roles that they never really get to stretch their scenes into much substance, while David Dastmalchian should have gotten a lot more screen time. Even with an eerie score from Paul Leonard-Morgan and solid cinematography from Ben Kutchins, Matt Ruskin’s direction never feels more than derivative of the previously mentioned Zodiac and Spotlight.
By no means a bad movie, Boston Strangler does not offer enough intensity to be appreciated as a crime movie. It does not get deep enough into the weeds of being a reporter to work as a story about journalism. There is definitely a story about empowerment here, and the accomplishments of both Loretta McLaughlin and Jean Cole should not go uncelebrated. Keira Knightley and Carrie Coon do justice to the story of two reporters who broke a major news story and helped shatter the glass ceiling for women in journalism. But, Boston Strangler could have done so much more to make their story feel more vital without undermining their success with conspiracy theories and half-explained alternate suspects. Boston Strangler is a decent story that could have been so much better.