Boston Strangler: Riveting true-crime drama

Boston Strangler (2023) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity and violent content

Available via: Hulu

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.17.23

Writer/director Matt Ruskin’s new film is an excellent companion to last autumn’s She Said.

 

His fact-based account of the early 1960s serial killer is far more honest than its 1968 big-screen predecessor, with Tony Curtis in the title role; it focused exclusively on a lead detective — played by Henry Fonda — who “single-handedly” obtains the murderer’s confession.

 

After Jean Cole (Carrie Coon, left) and Loretta McLaughlin (Keira Knightley) become the
"public face" of the rapidly developing Boston Strangler story, they're soon flooded by
hundreds of letters from women who insist they've been approached by the killer.

That film is, to put it kindly, a work of fiction very loosely inspired by actual events.

It completely ignored the two newspaper journalists who — most crucially — broke the story; recognized the crucial patterns that pointed to a serial killer (a phrase not even coined, at the time); and doggedly pursued subsequent leads … much to the displeasure of the Boston police.

 

Both were women, of course: Boston Record-American journalists Loretta McLaughlin and Jean Cole, played here by (respectively) Keira Knightley and Carrie Coon.

 

We’ve lately been enjoying a welcome surfeit of films that shine a long-overdue light on previously unsung women of major consequence, from 2016’s Queen of Katwe and Hidden Figures, to last year’s The Woman King and She Said (all of which make me wonder how many more equally inspiring stories are waiting to be told).

 

Boston Strangler definitely belongs in their company.

 

Knightley’s McLaughlin is introduced as an ambitious journalist thoroughly bored — and frustrated — by the softball society column fluff to which she has been relegated. Efforts to cover meatier material get shot down by her editor, Jack Maclaine (Chris Cooper, appropriately gruff and grizzled), who is sympathetic but unwilling to budge.

 

The message is clear: “This is simply the way of things.”

 

But McLaughlin continues to follow police reports, and becomes intrigued by the murders of three Boston women, aged 56 to 85, during the latter half of June 1962. Lacking any effective inter-departmental means to share information, and with differing jurisdictional oversight in various parts of the city, the police fail to recognize a common element that links the killings: the fact that all three were strangled with nylon stockings or a bathrobe belt.

 

Another odd detail: None of the apartments showed signs of forced entry, suggesting that the victims either knew the killer, or assumed he was a “trusted” figure such as a building maintenance man, or some other service individual. (We roll our eyes, at the thought of such naïve, innocent times.)

 

McLaughlin wants to pursue this lead; Maclaine won’t have it. But he grudgingly agrees to let her profile the three victims — on her own time — to learn if they had anything else in common.

 

White Boy Rick: Not worth the bother

White Boy Rick (2018) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for profanity, drug content, violence, sexual candor and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang

The point of this film — the reason for its existence — eludes me.

The press notes proclaim it a “moving story” of a blue-collar kid who “enters into a Faustian bargain” and ultimately is “manipulated by the very system meant to protect him” and “betrayed by the institutional injustice and corruption that defined Detroit, the home they loved.”

The hook is planted: Ricky (Richie Merritt, left), not wanting his father to be arrested,
reluctantly agrees to a dangerous undercover scheme proposed by FBI agents
Snyder (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Byrd (Rory Cochrane).

Like, wow. Lay it on a bit thicker, could you?

Makes me wonder if these folks watched their own film.

At no time can the narrative in White Boy Rick be considered “moving” to any degree, nor is there room for an ounce of sympathy for any of these individuals. It’s impossible to chart a fall from grace, when somebody hasn’t any to begin with.

Nobody in director Yann Demange’s film is likable:  not for a nanosecond. Nor are they interesting/captivating in the manner of characters in a Martin Scorsese crime film. These are just mopes,  and spending 110 minutes with this gaggle of amoral scumbags and opportunists is a bewildering waste of time. 

We reach the conclusion and wonder, okay … to what purpose?

Demange’s filmmaking skills are acceptable, and several performances are noteworthy. Screenwriters Andy Weiss, Logan Miller and Noah Miller adhere respectably to the real-world facts, and Tat Radcliffe’s grainy, gritty cinematography gives this saga the feel of a documentary; there’s a sense that these events are happening in real time, and we’re granted access as invisible observers.

An argument can be made that law enforcement officials shouldn’t take advantage of ingenuous minors, but Ricky Wershe Jr. was hardly a poster child for exploited innocence. He was a seasoned delinquent without a trace of conscience long before the FBI came calling; blame for that undoubtedly falls on the shoulders of his low-life father, who cheerfully schooled his son in a life of crime.

We meet 14-year-old Ricky (Richie Merritt) as he helps his father (Matthew McConaughey) out-hustle a bent dealer at a Detroit gun show. It’s immediately apparent that Rick Sr. is a blue-sky dreamer who flits from one unlikely get-rich-quick scheme to another; his current “occupation” involves selling illegally enhanced AK-47s to local thugs.

Ricky, his older sister Dawn (Bel Powley) and their father eke out a lower middle-class existence in a predominantly African-American eastside neighborhood, roughly seven miles from downtown Detroit. Ricky’s grandparents — Ray (Bruce Dern) and Verna (Piper Laurie) — live across the street, grimly hanging onto their memories of a time when the area was booming, and filled with Chrysler employees and their families.

Black Mass: Nightmarish deal with the devil

Black Mass (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for brutal violence, profanity, sexual candor and drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.18.15

Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.

The saga of gangster James “Whitey” Bulger was far from complete when Boston Globe reporters Gerard O’Neill and Dick Lehr — the former a Pulitzer winner, the latter a Pulitzer finalist — published their true-crime saga Black Mass in 2000. With his criminal empire having been crushed during the previous decade; Whitey already was six years a fugitive.

It may seem like a quiet meal, but the atmosphere is far from benign ... particularly when
mob enforcer Stephen Flemmi (Rory Cochrane, far left) decides that FBI agent John Morris
(David Harbour, far right) has insulted him. Suddenly, even Whitey Bulger (Johnny Depp,
center left) and fellow FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) are sure what'll happen...

He remained on the run until June 22, 2011, when he was arrested quietly in Santa Monica, Calif. Two courtroom trials later, jaw-dropping for their sordid detail, Whitey — then 83 years old — was sentenced to two consecutive life terms (plus five years, for good measure). He’s now a permanent resident at a Florida federal penitentiary.

Whitey’s vicious career, and the scandalous FBI incompetence that allowed it to flourish, have been brought to the big screen by director Scott Cooper, whose two previous films — Crazy Heart and Out of the Furnace — demonstrated an impressive flair for character drama. Cooper doesn’t disappoint here either; armed with a taut and densely layered script adaptation by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth, the director delivers a horrific portrait of unrestrained evil and corruption.

The film is anchored further by star Johnny Depp’s chilling depiction of Whitey: as far from the comic antics of Capt. Jack Sparrow as could possibly be imagined.

Depp obviously has an affinity for true crime, having previously played John Dillinger in director Michael Mann’s slick and sordid Public Enemies. Awful as Depp’s Dillinger was, though, a bit of the actor’s charm occasionally leaked around the edges, Mann and co-scripters Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman perhaps trying to suggest a soupçon of “honor among thieves” camaraderie.

You won’t find any such quasi-ethical respite here; Depp’s Whitey is the stuff of nightmares, his tightly compressed lips and stone-cold stare as unnerving as his flat, detached manner of speaking. The only thing worse than Whitey’s reluctance to smile, is an occasion that does prompt a death’s-head grin: a certain signal of looming brutality.

Folks will talk about this performance for quite some time.