Keira Knightley

Keira Knightley and Carrie Coon lead Matt Ruskin's "Boston Strangler," streaming on Hulu March 17.

“Telling a story about a journalist who is committed to getting to the truth feels very worthwhile right now,” Ruskin said. “Nobody bothered to get to the truth,” the film concludes. Ruskin spent over a year researching the Boston Strangler and reporters Cole and McLaughlin before writing the script. The “stunt” of putting two female reporters on the story eventually works in their favor, though, as female witnesses and neighbors seem to be more comfortable speaking on the record. Ruskin’s “Boston Strangler” focuses on the heroes of the story: Not the police officers bogged down by murky bureaucratic red tape, but rather the investigative reporters Loretta McLaughlin (Knightley) and Jean Cole (Coon) who helped define the case in the news. “Boston Strangler” loosely cites how the media helped create the serial killer “myth” and, in turn, popularize and mythologize killers. The murders are only heard as the camera focuses on bottles of milk on the counter or a bathtub faucet. [Matt Ruskin](https://www.indiewire.com/t/matt-ruskin/)’s “Boston Strangler,” starring [Keira Knightley](https://www.indiewire.com/t/keira-knightley/) and [Carrie Coon](https://www.indiewire.com/t/carrie-coon/), doesn’t hold back on the facts, nor does it dress them up with portrayals of violence to which true crime addicts are so accustomed. But the most graphic moment we see comes 38 minutes into the film; the most salacious element is a headline that Boston is plagued by an “orgy of murders.” But why are we conditioned to expect reenactments of the unspeakable? Loretta forges a relationship with a detective (Alessandro Nivola, continuing his period mastery post-“Many Saints of Newark” with a convincing Boston accent) who aids her intel. [Boston Strangler](https://www.indiewire.com/t/boston-strangler/) killed more than 11 single women between the ages of 19 and 85 in the greater Boston area between 1962 and 1964. (Spoiler: His support doesn’t last long, and the couple eventually divorced in real life.)

Period-piece specialist visits the more recent past in gast-moving crime drama about murders in the 1960s.

It’s one of the many, many instances when “Boston Strangler” rings true. Loretta’s husband, James, played by Morgan Spector, is admirably supportive of her career at first, but becomes understandably frustrated when Loretta becomes obsessed with the case and is rarely there for James and the children. And as was the case with Fincher’s film, “Boston Strangler” tells the story almost exclusively from the points of view of the investigators. (There are certain moments when Loretta is in male-dominated surroundings that have distinct echoes of Clarice Starling’s experiences in “The Silence of the Lambs.”) Writer-director Ruskin and editor Anne McCabe do a superb job of keeping the story moving, even though much of Loretta’s work involves grinding it out by knocking on doors, researching news clippings, interviewing survivors and relatives, making calls from pay phones, etc., etc. Pakula’s 1976 classic, and perhaps even more so by David Fincher’s “Zodiac.” As was the case with the Zodiac murders, questions still remain about the number of victims and the identity of the killer or killers in the Strangler case. These are nobodies.” Comes the response from Jean: “Who do you think our readers are?” Jack eventually relents and gives his blessing to Jean profiling the victims to see if there’s a bigger story here — with the caveat that she partner up with the veteran Loretta, who can show her the ropes.

Despite the talents of Knightley, Carrie Coon, and Chris Cooper, Hulu's true crime film adaptation never cracks the case.

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. 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. 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. 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. They also face structural pushback from comfortably aligned power systems when their reporting reveals how a lack of interdepartmental information sharing and basic professional follow-through by police departments is impacting the trajectory (and validity) of the investigation. For decades, police procedurals were a staple of the cinematic diet.

Writer-director Matt Ruskin's 'Boston Strangler' explores the infamous string of 1960s murders from the perspective of two reporters .

And it’s a story about the business of news — the circulation stunts, the headlines, the sensationalism. With each lead and breakthrough, Knightley subtly shows the roil of beneath-the-surface emotions; as a professional, Loretta can’t tip her hand, and as a woman, she feels more alive to be doing work that matters to her and was long denied her. Her tireless work ultimately uncovers a jaw-dropping connection among several of them that involves a facility for the criminally insane and the high-powered attorney F. She finds a more collaborative attitude in a homicide detective, Jim Conley (Alessandro Nivola), who’s willing to trade information about the case with her. About the same age and both married and raising kids, the two have a lot in common, communicated in a few deft scenes of crisp dialogue and loaded glances. This is a story of sisterhood that’s not about sloganeering but about the very basic matter of being taken seriously. The story belongs to Loretta McLaughlin (Knightley) and Jean Cole (Coon). Within the gray streets and the drab, smoky newsroom, this is a story of life against death, fueled by the rage and wisdom of tough dames seeking answers in a man’s world, entering places where women aren’t invited: the paper’s crime desk, the police precinct, the local watering hole. “Kid,” he tells her, “you’re not covering a homicide.” Raring to go, she offers to pursue the story on her own time. This time around, the investigator played by Fonda has just one scene and a couple of lines; the center instead belongs to the two female reporters who broke the story and, in the process, put the Boston PD on notice. Shot in and around Boston, the Hulu film is subdued and gripping, its intensely desaturated palette and Paul Leonard-Morgan’s dread-drenched score conveying the panic and gloom that held a city in a cursed spell for a year and half. A select group of upstanding male detectives puzzle over the lurid details of the crimes and wax psychological about the perp.

Two underestimated women reporters battle sexism as they set out to solve the serial murders that struck fear into Boston in the early 1960s in this low-key ...

The movie’s final breaths strike an unintentional down note rather than an uplifting, empowering one as seemingly intended: Loretta, having learned from Jean’s advice to accept an imperfect work-life balance, debates walking into her home, where her husband is waiting, and instead heads to a local bar to join Jean. Paul Leonard-Morgan’s score is haunting and foreboding, making the hairs on the back of our neck prickle. It makes a searing indictment of the sloppy, sexism-laced police work that might’ve resolved the case, and pays tribute to the two women who broke the investigation wide open. The death toll continues to rise, persons of interest (played by David Dastmalchian and Ryan Winkles) slip through their hands and the cops’ glaring mistakes begin to surface. But after her first front-page story draws the ire of Boston Police Commissioner McNamara (Bill Camp), Jack assigns Loretta a seasoned partner: Jean Cole ( [Carrie Coon](https://variety.com/t/carrie-coon/)), whose connections and quick-witted know-how will garner better results. [Keira Knightley](https://variety.com/t/keira-knightley/)) is a lifestyle reporter at the Record American, a newspaper continually scooped by its competitors.

Keira Knightley shines, alongside Carrie Coon, in Matt Ruskin's sensitive and effect look at the Boston Strangler case.

The scene isn’t offensive, but it’s hard not to mourn the subtlety Ruskin and his cinematographer, Ben Kutchins (“The White Lotus”), lost in filming it. Loretta’s sister-in-law calls her selfish for working instead of caring for her children and Loretta and Jean are routinely referred to as “skirts.” Ruskin pilfers one memorable slight from the actual events of 1962. Rather than refer to her by name, colleagues called her “the girl.” As Loretta follows the story with Jean at her side, she’s waylaid by the boys’ club culture of newsrooms and police stations, the inherent vulnerability of her sex, and her own husband (Morgan Spector, “The Gilded Age”). Loretta and Jean were real women, real reporters for the Boston Record-American (now the Boston Herald). As she seeks justice for a growing tally of victims, her own womanhood is an inextricable part of the story.

The Pirates of the Caribbean star and the British musician began their romance in early 2011 after they were introduced by a mutual friend at a dinner party. By ...

Righton opted for a black suit with a white shirt, a pair of black sunglasses and a gold watch. Knightley and Righton made a joint appearance at the SeriousFun Children's Network London Gala at The Roundhouse in early December 2013. In November 2022, the couple stepped out at the launch party for A Magazine curated by Erdem, in partnership with MatchesFashion. Knightley donned a stunning black halter dress paired with a classic Chanel bag and a pair of black sunglasses. In fact, news of the birth only became public after Knightley attended the Oct. We had a beautiful wedding and there was a lot of love." Knightley and Righton are equally as private about their relationship, though they have stepped out together publicly a handful of times over the years. By May 2012, Knightley and Righton were engaged. The couple also had a second secret ceremony just for friends, though the date and location are not known. The couple wed in an intimate ceremony at the town hall in Mazan, a small commune in the Provence region of the country. "Keira looked beautiful," the source added. those words that you see as completely negative, and you suddenly see them as being incredibly positive, and that's actually quite liberating and quite nice," she told the magazine.

Knightley plays reporter Loretta McLaughlin, who teams with Carrie Coon's Jean Cole to tirelessly follow the Strangler case, even in the face of sexism and ...

If you weren’t from the street that the character was from in Boston, you were not allowed to do the Boston accent. [Boston Strangler is based](https://screenrant.com/boston-strangler-2023-movie-review/) on a real-life serial killer story, there’s one detail that was left purposely unrealistic when the film was being shot. Hulu’s new true crime thriller may be based on the case of the real life Boston Strangler, but the movie focuses less on the killer and more on the two female journalists who broke the story.

One of the many losses suffered as the medium of film has ceded ground to streaming television is the elegant procedural—the kind of movie that deals with ...

Albert DeSalvo was long thought (by some) to be the sole perpetrator of these 13 crimes, and yet Boston Stranger, and its central characters, aren’t quite satisfied with that conclusion. And it does so without exploiting the real loss and horror at the center of its story. For much of its run, Boston Strangler is straightforward, tracking an escalating citywide panic about these unsolved (and ongoing) murders toward the capturing of a prime suspect. Ruskin is careful to add layers of texture to his handsomely mounted film, trying to locate the actual people at the center of a storm of headlines and gruesome happenings. Look to Boston Strangler, a new film debuting on Hulu on March 17, which borrows from (or gives a nod of respect to) Zodiac’s playbook to investigate, in fictional form, its titular ghoul. Thus there is a ceiling to break through while she attempts to crack the case, an added element of stakes and tension that gives Boston Strangler a more poignant depth than had it simply been a grimy murder mystery.

Keira Knightley and Carrie Coon step into the shoes of investigative reporters in Boston Strangler (on Disney+ March 17), based on the U.S. serial killer ...

This time around, Knightley is taken to the early 1960s in Boston Strangler, the new journalism crime drama written and directed by Matt Ruskin (Crown Heights).

Although the screenplay often falls into the conventions of the procedural crime drama, it is Ruskin’s filmmaking, and the performances, that help make Boston Strangler a tense viewing experience and worthy entry in the canon of Keira Knightley period pieces. Chief among them is Carrie Coon as the hard-headed Jean who possesses a similar grit to Loretta with a greater willingness to stand up to her superiors. It follows the story of Loretta McLaughlin (Knightley), a journalist for the lifestyle section of the Record-American newspaper looking to cover more integral stories.

At times, sturdy crime thriller Boston Strangler feels less like a movie and more the solution to an exam question. How does a filmmaker respond to the ...

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Keira Knightley says people told her it was embarrassing to sign on for "Bend It Like Beckham," the iconic soccer film.

[Jonathan Rhys Meyers](https://www.popsugar.co.uk/jonathan-rhys-meyers) as Joe, the team's coach. The movie is particularly [beloved by many queer people](https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbwbaa/bend-it-like-beckham-movie-lgbtq-relationship), given the subtext of Jess and Jules's relationship. "The idea of the whole thing was sort of ridiculous, and it's amazing, because it's still the film, even today, you know, if somebody comes up and talks to me about my work, it's that one. "But it was the idea of it, because you know women's football was not as big back then," Knightley added. [Keira Knightley](https://www.popsugar.co.uk/Keira-Knightley) says that people initially warned her about doing it. During the ["Boston Strangler"](https://www.popsugar.co.uk/entertainment/boston-strangler-movie-49094506) star's appearance on "The Tonight Show Starring [Jimmy Fallon](https://www.popsugar.co.uk/Jimmy-Fallon)" on March 15, host Jimmy Fallon mentioned that the 20th anniversary of the US release of the movie was this year.

The actress revealed that people told her starring in the Gurinder Chadha-directed film was 'embarrassing'

Adding: “The idea of the whole thing was sort of ridiculous and it’s amazing, because it’s still the film, even today, you know, if somebody comes up and talks to me about my work, it’s that one. Nobody will see it, it’s fine.’ But it was the idea of it, because you know women’s soccer was not as big back then,” Knightley – who was on the show to promote her new role in the upcoming film Boston Strangler – explained. [eira Knightley](/topic/keira-knightley) has revealed she was told she should be embarrassed about starring in film Bend It Like Beckham when it was first released.