BOSTON STRANGLER

Here's the decision. This is a well-made, fast-moving thriller built on a true story worth telling: two women reporters in 1963 chasing a serial killer the police kept missing. The film honors justice, honors dogged truth-telling, and mostly keeps its violence off-screen — heard through a neighbor's wall rather than shown.

But it earns its R. The subject is a man strangling women, and the movie doesn't pretend otherwise. There's strong violence in the scenes it does depict, sexual assault discussed if not shown, seventeen obscenities including two "f" words, and three strong misuses of the name of Jesus. The killer's method is, by design, disturbing.

So: if you're an adult drawn to true crime and can weather hard material without harm to your conscience, this is worth your time — and it plays best at home, where you set the terms. If you're choosing for children or teens, choose something else.

Boston, 1963. Loretta McLaughlin, a reporter stuck writing fashion columns and kitchen-gadget reviews, notices a pattern: three women strangled across the city, each murder eerily alike. She fights to cover the story — and her first byline, "Mad Strangler Loose," lands like a grenade.

City leaders want it buried. Her editor kills it. Then another victim turns up. As Loretta and her colleague Jean pull the threads the police left dangling, the story stops being a story — and the danger comes home. What they finally uncover, we'll leave to you.

Three stars, and here's what earns them. The plot moves fast from the first frame to the last, and the film builds a genuine, mounting tension as Loretta closes in. Keira Knightley and Carrie Coon anchor it as two reporters fighting the story and their own newsroom at once.

The craft choice that both helps and hurts is the look. The cinematography is faithful to the 1960s — deliberate light and shadow, single-camera framing that puts you in the era. But it's often too dark, and more than a few scenes are simply hard to make out. Credit, too, the director's restraint: he leans on period photographs to convey the horror of the crimes rather than staging them, which keeps the violence powerful without becoming gratuitous. A strong film held just short of great by its own murk.

At its core this is a moral film. Loretta and Jean want one thing above all: justice for women no one else was fighting for. That pursuit — truth dug out and brought to light, the vulnerable defended — is the film's engine, and it's an honorable one, even as the movie honestly admits that two copycat killers escape the reckoning they deserve.

Running alongside is a feminist thread. The film portrays the real sexism of the 1960s newsroom — male reporters belittling the women, downplaying their work — and follows Loretta as she risks her career and her marriage to break through it. You can affirm the dignity and courage on display while weighing how the film frames the fight; both readings sit in the movie at once. There's also a brief grace note: a church scene with a choir singing.

What the story finally chases is what Scripture chases — justice for the defenseless, evil dragged out of the dark. But the film can name the longing better than it can satisfy it. When the copycats walk free, the ache for a final accounting remains. Scripture answers it: "He has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness" (Acts 17:31).

This is a serious, well-acted thriller about two women who refused to let a story — or a killer — stay buried, and it honors the pursuit of justice. It's also dark in every sense, with strong violence and profanity built around disturbing crimes. So our answer stands: wait for home — adults only, where you control the room. Looking for something the whole family can watch instead? Start with our family-friendly picks.