Boston Strangler (2023) review

Record American reporter Loretta McLaughlin (Keira Knightley) - who normally works at the Lifestyle desk - notices an alarming trend of ladies in her area being strangled to death and begs her boss Jack MacLaine (Chris Cooper) to let her do a little investigating; later, fellow writer Jean Cole (Carrie Coon) helps her ... which leads them to a man named Albert DeSalvo (David Dastmalchian).  It's a slightly less sanctimonious version of 2022's She Said, only set in the 1960's - where the sentiment was "women can't cover crime stories" - except it has that rare ability of taking a true story about serial killers and draining absolutely every droplet of energy out of it until all that's left is a plodding procedural ... and Beantown itself is so gray and drab it looks like it barely survived the apocalypse.  The "big reveal" that DeSalvo most likely did not act alone and collaborated with two other criminals in prison to come up with the false narrative is troubling ... and means those men "got away with it" by outsmarting the authorities.  I want to believe we've gotten better at forensic work in the fifty years since this took place, but the Innocence Project suggests otherwise.