Knightley and Carrie Coon star as journalists whose persistent reporting forced the cops and city hall to take notice of a series of murders of women in the early 1960s
Keira Knightley and Carrie Coon do their professional best with this stolid and inhibited TV-movie-style trudge through a gruesome true-crime story: the Boston Strangler, the US serial killer to whom police and press attributed 13 murders of women in Boston during the early 1960s. A confession for all 13 was secured from one Albert DeSalvo, but with forensic evidence linking him to only the last victim. Just four years after DeSalvo conviction, Tony Curtis famously went against his dreamboat image by playing him in a brassy film with Henry Fonda as the detective on his trail.
This version tries getting to grips with the possibility of multiple culprits and that the Boston Strangler was in fact a misogynist hivemind phenomenon. It moreover tells the story of the women whose role has almost been forgotten: two tough, resourceful journalists, Loretta McLaughlin (Knightley) and Jean Cole (Coon), who first christened the killer “The Boston Strangler” and whose fiercely persistent reporting for the Record American (a paper later merged into the Boston Herald) forced the cops and city hall to take notice.
Read the full article: Boston Strangler review – Keira Knightley serial-killer story tells fierce tale.
