Movies…with a little bit of obscure culture and sports mixed in
“Loretta McLaughlin was the reporter who first connected the murders and broke the story of the Boston Strangler. She and Jean Cole challenged the sexism of the early 1960s to […]
“Loretta McLaughlin was the reporter who first connected the murders and broke the story of the Boston Strangler. She and Jean Cole challenged the sexism of the early 1960s to report on the city’s most notorious serial killer.”
Director: Matt Ruskin
Writer: Matt Ruskin
Staring: Keira Knightley, Carrie Coon, Chris Cooper, Alessandra Nivola, David Dastmalchian, Morgan Spector, Ryan Winkles
Release Date: March 17, 2023
IMDB
Boston Strangler (2023) is a story that will leave you perfectly content, but also slightly disappointed. The movie itself is not bad in any respects. It is made well, acting well, and flows without many hiccups. The focus on Loretta McLaughlin (Keira Knightly) and Jean Cole (Carrie Coon) puts a different lens on a familiar story and the supporting characters that pop up accent some of the best scenes of the movie.
Those who know a bit about the Boston Strangler know that not everyone trusts the facts and circumstances regarding how the city-wide manhunt ended. Boston Strangler wrestles with the city’s desperation to put an end to madness, police force’s inability to appease themselves, and a reporter’s desire for closure and respect.
Loretta McLaughlin is a reporter pigeon holed in a deadened detail. Her status at the paper changes when she is the first to connect three murders in the Boston area who were all raped and murdered by strangulation in the Boston area. Courtesy of a slip up by a policeman, Loretta educates the readers of the Boston Record American that all of the women killed had stockings tied around their neck.
When a fourth woman is killed she is joined on the case by experienced investigative reporter Jean Cole. The two butt heads at first, as one would expect, but eventually Cole and McLaughlin become a dutiful team and together they begin putting on threads and working with the police department to try and put an end to the killers.
As the months and years pass one, it becomes incredibly obvious that the Boston police department has botched the case on multiple fronts. Lack of communication, lack of resources and lack of transparency has led to a lack of trust, and McLaughlin is the megaphone for the people feeling this hurt. As the stress builds, the distrust between the news reporters and the crime catchers becomes a darkening shadow. When an arrest is finally made, there is a giant exhale of relief from everyone, except McLaughlin and Cole. The pair continue to investigate the cases and pose an alternative theory, one that contradicts what the Boston PD would want its city to know about.
Kiera Knightly gives a standard, very good performance as McLaughlin. It is Carrie Coon who comes in and starts throwing fastballs. Much like how her character of Jean Cole needs to come in and help McLaughlin get her footing, Coon adds a base of quiet, self-assured confidence just when the movie begins to become too much of an underdog story. The moment in Boston Stranger when she marches right into the door of the editor of the Record American and castrates the higher-ups for putting her and McLaughlin’s photos on the paper made me give a little fist pump. It is a great teammate moment, and the way Coon does it with its matter-of-factness makes it all the more compelling.
While the relationship with McLaughlin and Cole is well-paced throughout, there is a minor relationship that hits a massive road bump halfway through the movie. The homelife of the McLaughlin’s is out-of-touch for the time; Loretta is the work-aholic and her husband James (Morgan Spector) is the more stay-at-home type. At first James is all supportive, but there is a tonal shift in their relationship that happens incredibly fast. Too fast. All of a sudden, there is disapproval and ambivalence toward one another. While the relationship is not the most important part of the movie, it still is jarring to see the 180 degree switch even if the roles are reversed from what you’d expect.
The best male-female relationship in the movie is that between McLaughlin and Detective Conley (Alessandro Nivola). Feed me more Conley, this man’s relationship with the McLaughlin and the press as a whole is organic. It feels right. McLaughlin does feel like a relative of Conley with the way he talks to her so matter of factly. He gives her shit, but still caves to what she asks for. Then comes the end of the movie when he has moved and she hasn’t, you can see the sadness in his face and it’s matched by the disappointment from McLaughlin.
In 1968 The Boston Strangler starring Tony Curtis, Henry Fonda and George Kennedy came out to much fanfare. Directed by Ricahrd Fleischer, The Boston Strangler is from the cops point of view, making it a very interesting retrospective. If you watched The Boston Strangler and Boston Strangler back-to-back, you are going to have two very different experiences. You have two completely different points of view, and you also have a crazy amount of time that has passed. Like real life time. Over the years the viewpoint of Albert DeSalvo and murders themselves has changed with new evidence and new investigations. The Boston Strangler does not have all the answers. Does it take away from the enjoyment of the movie for you?
One last little tid-bit before ending. The most tense scene in the movie is when McLaughlin enters the basement of possible suspect Daniel Marsh (Ryan Winkles). McLaughlin gets spooked and has to run out of Marsh’s strange living space out of fear for her life. It does not reach the peaks of Clarice Starling in Silence Of The Lambs (1991), but you can get the tone that writer and director Matt Ruskin is going for.
Boston Stranger is a perfect streaming movie. I do not think that this movie would have made a profit in theaters, so to push for that would have been a mistake. But in terms of getting limited eyeballs on it with the possibility of more longevity, streaming was and is the correct path.
Boston Strangler is a Hulu original.
STANKO RATING: C+
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