Mark Reviews Movies: BOSTON STRANGLER

Boston Strangler, 20th Century Studios

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | March 16, 2023

Writer/director Matt Ruskin's Boston Strangler is far more fascinating for the conclusion it arrives at than for the process it takes to get there. The story itself is little more than we anticipate from a cynical crime drama and a respectful depiction of journalism. While Ruskin certainly gets the look and the tone of this right, the movie is all investigative surface, with only a few flashes of the bigger point the filmmaker wants to make. That bigger point isn't much, either, but it's only because the movie is too busy going through the motions until it arrives.

In general, though, Ruskin's examination of how the hunt for the so-called Boston Strangler occurred and, more to the point, in what ways that search went wrong is fine enough. It takes on a few perspectives, mainly those belonging to a pair of intrepid reporters, a newspaper editorial team that worries about what professional relationships might be broken if some harsh truths come to light, and a collection of increasingly wearied police detectives, who become less and less certain that they'll ever discover the right suspect. That only a few of these characters even have hints of lives, personalities, or beliefs beyond the requirements of the plotting should give one a sense of Ruskin's central aim with this material.

This by-the-books breakdown of the manhunt focuses mainly on Loretta McLaughlin (Keira Knightley), a journalist at the Boston Record American (previously and now the Herald). She's stuck doing lifestyle stories, including reviews of home appliances, but Loretta really wants to sink her teeth into some deeper, more hard-hitting journalism. She makes a habit of cutting out and collecting clippings of stories from other papers, looking for connections some might be missing and keeping a board of all the times her paper has been scooped.

That pays off to some extent when she notices stories about three women who have been murdered over the course of two weeks. All of them were sexually assaulted and strangled, and each one was left with a twisted kind of decorative bow around her neck. Despite Loretta's obvious talents, her boss Jack Maclaine (Chris Cooper) is hesitant to give such a story to a first-timer at the crime desk, so he also tasks Jean Cole (Carrie Coon), a long-time investigate reporter, to help with the assignment.

The rest of this is pretty much the usual course for such a story. Loretta and Jean hit the pavement, start talking to potential witnesses and family members of an increasing number of victims (The movie offers one mother as a stand-in for all of the pain and grief these killings have caused), make various phone calls, sift through assorted documents, and try to stay on the right side of the local cops as much as possible, in order to get access to crime scenes and off-the-record leads.

The newspaper's relationship with the police, by the way, becomes fraught after Loretta hits hard and accurately in her reporting. Police Commissioner McNamara (Bill Camp) doesn't seem too interested in cooperating with outside entities to solve the murders, while the department doesn't seem willing to acknowledge that they're even connected until a certain number of women are killed.

It's one part of a pattern that unfolds here: cops, the paper's editors, and others ignoring or downplaying the fears of and regular violence against women, until such apathy becomes impossible. Even the few men who seem to care here, including Detective Conley (Alessandro Nivola) and Loretta's seemingly supportive husband (played by Morgan Spector), can only take that concern so far, although we're mostly reminded that the progressively frustrated spouse at home is a cheap cliché, regardless of gender.

These threads of apathy toward and dismissal of the regular worries and routine victimization of women do come into play eventually—if only a bit—with the movie's central thesis and theory about the killer's identity and nature. That's partly why the speculative conclusion drawn up by Ruskin's screenplay is so intriguing and potent, but it arrives too late and with only a minimum degree of consideration in the narrative until that point.

Instead, we follow the reporters following the leads, to various dimly lit streets and rooms (The shadows of Ben Kutchins' cinematography are appropriately imposing) within Boston and places beyond the city, and looking into assorted suspects. Loretta's "favorites" are Daniel Marsh (Ryan Winkles), the jealous ex-boyfriend of one victim, and Albert DeSalvo (David Dastmalchian), a lifelong criminal whose methods for committing other offenses match those of the Strangler. Loretta and Jean find unexpected connections and poke holes in alibis, but the mounting sense of defeatism from everyone apart from Loretta, as well as history itself, tells us that there can't be a simple, satisfactory solution to the mystery of this killer.

Again, it's all fine as a traditionally structured and plotted narrative about the work of finding clues, following leads, developing theories, and determining an answer, no matter how anticlimactic that resolution might be (The fact that the movie's key hypothesis revolves around the notion that such violence is common makes it so haunting). Ruskin is clearly reaching for more than the ordinary with Boston Strangler, though, and while that ambition certainly elevates the third act and offers a final jab of cynicism, most of the movie seems too content to adhere to a standard brand of storytelling.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products