KNIGHTLEY FINDS RYTHM IN TIME

IN REVIEW

JOURNALISM POLICING THE BIG CITY TOGETHER

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

One of the great haunts of a modern high density city is the unchecked killing spree of a serial killer.

The Boston Strangler killed 13 women in the Greater Boston area during the 1960s.

Keira Knightley stars as the journalist at the Record-American whose early stories about the serial nature of the crimes helped the police eventually capture the murderer.

Director Matt Ruskin spins the narrative around the three main biopic characters involved in the development of the stories: the journalist writer, the managing editor of the newspaper and the police detective engaging with the journalist to solve the murder mystery.  

The narrative begins with a wrap around in the dimly lit atmosphere of an urban crime story along the Eastern Seaboard.

The cheap tenement buildings get a bit dimmer with the poorly lit hallways where a serial killer first approaches his victims.

Knightley, as journalist Loretta McLaughlin, does a good job of toning down her screen character to become the more masculine investigative reporter who pushes her ideas about the crime story to move off the lifestyle desk where she has been reviewing new appliances coming on to the market for the housewives of suburban nuclear families.  

McLaughlin has the story before the crime desk. And so she helps her professional career at the same time she helps save women in the city from being murdered.

Ruskin fuses the gender politics of the workplace with the difficulties in negotiating assignments with the experienced egos running the newsroom.

Chris Cooper plays managing editor Jack Maclaine who after quite some thought decides to give McLaughlin the slimmest of chances, not because of her gender but because of the merits of the news story she has pitched him.

Cooper uses that authoritarian voice of his screen character to manage the newsroom and shape the front pages with the stories about the serial killer murdering women in their apartments by posing as a maintenance person coming to fix the plumbing.

Knightley and Cooper show the pressures on journalists that come from many levels, including the internal ethics and professionalism of journalism.

Alessandro Nivola develops a Bostonian street accent for the role of lead detective, Jim Conley. Nivola has quietly put together an impressive filmography of supporting roles, including the FBI agent in American Hustle (2013) and the American capitalist in Coco Before Chanel (2009) as well as the aspiring paleontologist in Jurassic Park III (2001).

Detective Conley is genuinely working through the leads to solve the crime, but he makes a few mistakes and the work is a bit overwhelming as people begin to panic as the news stories spread to the front pages of every newspaper in the city.

McLaughlin too must team up with the more experienced investigative journalist Jean Cole, played by Carrie Coon, to unravel the mystery.

Knightley may be at her best in the lead role, finding a period piece in the 1960s, with the American cars, typewriters, phones and cataloguing system being used before the era of personal computers.

McLaughlin is only able to have her own career, with two children in the household, because of her sharing, understanding husband.

The director’s camera work maintains the tone and atmosphere of the film, by shooting scenes in narrow corridors and small rooms with a long shot, while also making close up portrait shots three dimensional by shooting behind one actor in a moment of interesting dialogue with another actor.

And the film is slowed down at certain moments to create suspense while the score seems to compel the actors through those same scenes.

Ridley Scott produces the film, which is evident in the overall quality of the finished film product.

Boston Strangler is a Hulu film product streaming on Disney+ in Canada.