Keira Knightley and Carrie Coon try their best in mediocre Boston Strangler movie
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There is a sneaking feeling throughout Keira Knightley's new movie Boston Strangler that we've seen this all before. The story of the Boston Strangler isn't wholly unknown, though it isn't ubiquitous in the way, say, Ted Bundy is.
Still, there's a familiarity to it — vulnerable people in society are being killed and no one seems to care. In Boston Strangler's case, the victims are elderly women living alone — the pinnacle of invisibility until a journalist named Loretta McLaughlin sees a pattern.
Loretta is also hemmed in by her gender. She's assigned to the lifestyle desk of the Record American (the paper which would eventually become the Boston Herald) and there she shall stay! Eventually she convinces her boss to take a chance on her, but it is only with the help of veteran investigative reporter Jean Cole (Carrie Coon) that the story really gets its legs.
And this is where the film seems to stop being about investigative journalism and switches into being a dedicated crime drama. We stop pounding the pavement with Jean and Loretta, the few glimpses into their home lives end, and the role of the news stories they write in the apprehension of the eventual suspect feels secondary to the orbit of the characters, a confusing gravitational circle whose centre is amorphous at best.
It is a shame that the two leads are stuck in such a two-dimensional movie; a better film might have made more of the idea of what it means to be invisible as a woman and the various ways women are victimised throughout their lives, even in death. Boston Strangler can't quite reach that metaphor, though, stuck in service to the whodunnit.
The case of the Boston Strangler is one still shrouded in mystery, but the movie tries to make drama out of supposition, leaving even those who are familiar with the case (like yours truly) confused. Character motivations, outside of Loretta and Jean's, feel shallow at best and contrived at worst. Perhaps because not enough time is given to these secondary players their shifts and betrayals have no impact on the viewer.
Much has been made lately of colour grading and light in cinema, and Boston Strangler falls victim to the same trends. It is muddy and dark and vaguely sepia tinted, as if the period-accurate cars and fashion (and attitudes) weren't enough to remind us that this is in the past.
The sole visual interest comes in the way the crimes themselves are filmed, which is poignant and haunting, eschewing the usual gratuitousness of visual violence against women on screen and opting for the far more intimate sounds of their murders instead. Not to say we never see any violence against women, but it isn't used as a cheap way to elicit an emotional response.
What is most perplexing is that the few facts we do know, the film alters. There is always some manner of fictionalisation of the truth so a movie can truly sing, but the departure from truth in one particular scene is so egregious — and alters so much about what we know about the case and the people involved — that when you learn it never happened, it undermines the rest of the film.
Which is a shame, because Boston Strangler is basically fine and mostly entertaining. Its leads are strong, the writing is solid, and the premise is interesting. The problem is, there have been enough stellar movies about investigative journalism that a mediocre one feels bad by comparison.
Boston Strangler is now available to watch in the UK on Disney+ and in the US on Hulu.
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