Review of Boston Strangler (2023) by Jonesy10 — 22 May 2023

When I first heard about this film coming out and it's subject matter being about the infamous Boston Strangler investigations I was very interested. Then I found out who was the lead actor and it's Kiera Knightley, and my hopes slowly flushed away.

I still gave it a watch as I am a fan of true crime content in many forms. But this was being released on HULU and not in the cinema which is always a bad sign the studio have no faith in it. They were right, and my assumptions about the film were also right - it's yet another bland meandering boring plod through nearly two hours of not much tension when there should be, and following the two crusading female news journalists played decently enough to be fair by Carrie Coon and Knightley. Whereas Coon brings a weary heft to her side character role, it's Knightley that gets the lion share of the screen and the film suffers for it. Not once did I believe this character played by Knightley would be behaving and acting so recklessly in her dogged pursuit of the Strangler. I wouldn't say she's a bad actress of the past, but the range for me seems to be the same whatever she's cast in. And now in these modern times we get to hear Knightley character come across all preachy and very girl bossy with her male colleagues, male bosses and her husband accusing them of generally being women haters for one of a better couple of words, standing in the way of female progress and preferring her to stay at home with the kids etc. It's this type of pointless social commentary that Hollywood scriptwriters currently don't get and think the audience wants to be lectured to for two hours. We just want entertainment and this film isn't it. In no way should this film be placed beside the superior "The Boston Strangler" from 1968 with the legendary Tony Curtis and Henry Fonda. In fact we just didn't need a new film about this already well informed story from American crime history, especially with the modern classic "Zodiac" from 2007 that did all this 100 times better. Pointless and Preachy.