Keira Knightley is an aspiring investigative reporter with a local Boston newspaper in the 1960s, Chris Cooper is her old-fashioned editor reluctantly willing to give her a chance to crack the Boston Strangler case, and Carrie Coon is the more experienced and hard-nosed journalist who becomes her partner on the case. This true crime thriller may tread familiar ground and lack an edge, but the first half of the film offers an appealing time travel to 1960s Boston and works as an enticing infrastructure for the story. Keira Knightley is well-cast and gives a highly effective performance as the driven but not necessarily tough-skinned protagonist. She's a feminist for all the right reasons. And as written and directed by Matt Ruskin, the film has a tidy efficiency about it. However, if you're after thrills and chills, you should look elsewhere. Boston Strangler is by no means an exploitation movie; the killings are depicted so tactfully that they seem almost inconsequential. Ruskin is more interested in the procedural and political side of this story, which makes the film a little too businesslike and fastidious towards the end, when Ruskin becomes desperate to find conclusions to an inconclusive story.
Review of Boston Strangler
Boston Strangler
(2023)
If you're after thrills and chills, you should look elsewhere
29 January 2024