Boston Strangler
Keira Knightley plays a jobbing reporter in a horrific true-life case given a rather dull rendering in Matt Ruskin’s low-key depiction.
Bodycounting: Keira Knightley and Carrie Coon
According to the connoisseur of crime Colin Wilson, one murder is committed every minute, somewhere in the world. Perhaps more disturbingly, a police authority estimated that there are five hundred serial killers at large in the United States at any given time. Five hundred. The US is a large country and killers can move from one state to another with ease, while local police forces struggle to keep up. So why was the Boston Phantom – or the Boston Strangler as he became known – so different? The Rolling Stones released a song about him, ‘Midnight Rambler,’ Tony Curtis played him in Richard Fleischer’s The Boston Strangler (1968) and William Goldman penned his 1964 book No Way to Treat a Lady on the Bostonian stranglings. According to Detective Conley (Alessandro Nivola) in the new film, the case is so baffling because “the usual rules don’t apply… he is as careful as he is deranged.” And there is no motive… and there is no evidence.
The murders were perpetrated between 1962 and 1964 and Matt Ruskin’s film takes obvious delight in the period recreation, the streets, the bars and the offices. But unlike Fleischer’s film, Ruskin’s focuses not on the Strangler but on the reporter Loretta McLaughlin (Keira Knightley), who is consigned to the “lifestyle desk” of the daily tabloid Boston Record. But even though she’s just a woman – and a mother of three – she appears to have a better nose for investigative journalism than her male peers in homicide. So, juggling her domestic duties, she works overtime to tie together the clues that slip past the police and her own colleagues. This is what we might call the She Said school of reportage, where it is the journalist in the spotlight, rather than the monster she is attempting to expose. Unfortunately, accomplished as Ms Knightley is, Loretta fails to resonate as a flesh and blood character – maybe she’s just too busy patrolling the streets of Boston.
There is a weighty nobility that hangs over Ruskin’s film, accentuated by a lugubrious score and by Ben Kutchins’ desaturated sepia-tinged cinematography. Tonally, the film is largely static, leading to a soporific flatness delivered in a minor key. The killer himself is only fleetingly glimpsed, although the cries of his victims can be heard, notably in one shot that just focuses on a dripping bathroom tap. Perhaps the film is too reverent to its setting and its period to spring to life, struggling against the luridness of its theme. We never know who these poor women were – there were thirteen victims in all – or really know the three children left abandoned in the wake of Loretta’s crusade. So what we have is a murder mystery playing against its subject, replacing any smidgen of excitement with monotony. Loretta McLaughlin deserved more than this. Hers was a pioneering story, and only the end captions come close to celebrating her professional triumph.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Keira Knightley, Carrie Coon, Alessandro Nivola, David Dastmalchian, Morgan Spector, Bill Camp, Chris Cooper, Robert John Burke, Rory Cochrane, Peter Gerety, Luke Kirby, Greg Vrotsos, Kyra Weeks.
Dir Matt Ruskin, Pro Ridley Scott, Kevin J. Walsh, Michael Pruss, Josey McNamara and Tom Ackerley, Screenplay Matt Ruskin, Ph Ben Kutchins, Pro Des John P. Goldsmith, Ed Anne McCabe, Music Paul Leonard-Morgan, Costumes Arjun Bhasin, Dialect coaches Joy Ellison, Carla Meyer and Kohli Calhoun.
20th Century Studios/Scott Free Productions/LuckyChap Entertainment-Disney+.
112 mins. USA. 2022. UK and US Rel: 17 March 2023. Cert. 16.
