Boston Strangler review: Keira Knightley tracks an infamous killer

Ruskin also knows how to convey essential background in economic strokes. Two scenes with blowhard Boston Police Department Commissioner Ed McNamara (Bill Camp)—including one with him surrounded by popping flashbulbs, telling reporters they’re going to catch the parties responsible for the murders—tell us all we need to know about law enforcement’s prioritization of image protection over action.

Still, with its intense focus on jurisdictional jockeying and intrepid reporting, Boston Strangler exists in a tangled thicket of plotting and general period mood. Its greater narrative purpose never comes into focus and the characters, as presented here, offer only thumbnail depth.

None of the deaths mean much at all, since we’re not asked to sympathize with the victims. That wouldn’t necessarily matter, as the numbers mount, if the primary audience stand-ins were more compelling. While the film does a good job of fleshing out the pressure and demands Loretta and Jean are under, even they seem somewhat unknowable as multidimensional people. They simply represent a type. Knightley, and especially Coon, provide what lift they can, but are let down by what’s on the page.

The relationship which most works is a sub rosa one between Loretta and Detective Conley (Alessandro Nivola), who meet occasionally to share details about the murders. Possessing begrudging mutual respect, each appreciates the other’s doggedness as well as the degree to which the other’s work can extend beyond the parameters of their own.

Heavy on the telling versus the showing, Ruskin’s film lacks compelling, standout scenes. For long passages it simply plods along, offering perfunctory, surface-level engagement. When things require an informational jolt, a phone call from a New York police officer or a sudden meet-up with a talkative local cop from another parish does the trick.

Thus, the film is perhaps most interesting around the edges—for things not strictly on the screen. In its own glancing way, this new version could serve as a bookend in a fascinating sociological case study on the evolution of true crime entertainment, when stacked up alongside 1968’s The Boston Strangler.

That film, directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Tony Curtis (in a Golden Globe-nominated performance), centered its story around the chief detective, John Bottomly (Henry Fonda), who coaxed a controversial confession out of DeSalvo. Widely derided for its dubious framing and fast-and-loose relationship with known historical facts, it also featured a poster with a tagline (“Why did 13 women willingly open their doors to the Boston Strangler?”) that would surely induce no small amount of online scolding today.

The 2023 version of this tale centers the women who broke the story, and reported it out. It could and should be more interesting, but instead it offers no new illumination—just a different muddy version of a complex case.