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Reviews Counted:50
Fresh:38
Rotten:12
Average Rating:7/10
Consensus: Director Adrian Shergold doesn't shy away from the darker elements of the movie's subject, and Timothy Spall is mesmerizing as the title character.
Synopsis: Timothy Spall (Professor Pettigrew from the Harry Potter movies) gives a magnificently multilayered performance as the protagonist in PIERREPOINT: THE LAST HANGMAN. Spall plays Albert Pierrepoint,... [More]
Starring: Timothy Spall, Juliet Stevenson, Eddie Marsan, James Corden
Director: Adrian Shergold
A suitably sombre treatment of a sombre story, Pierrepoint is nevertheless a riveting drama, sketching out not only the salient facts of Albert Pierrepoint's life but the turmoil in which that life caused in his soul
Top CriticIn the wrong hands this could have been capital punishment, but as a low key drama about one man's unique approach to life and other people's deaths, it's actually just, er, capital.
A genuine and skillful account of one of Britain's most morally ambiguous working-class characters.
the end result feels like business as usual done by-the-book.
Pierrepoint is worth seeing for Shergold’s attention to process and for all the ghoulish details.
Somewhere in this true story lies a grand statement about what taking lives for a living really does to a person’s moral compass. [Director] Adrian Shergold never quite finds it; his film dutifully recounts the facts but only skims the surface.
The actors' understated performances, coupled with an underwritten screenplay, ultimately leave the audience dangling.
Top Critic...there's little doubt that the film will work just as well on the small screen as it does in theaters.
Plodding biopic.
Handles capitol punishment in a similar way that "Vera Drake" tackled the abortion issue ... allows Timothy Spall's resplendent dramatic chops to shine.
Reaches for complexity but ends up, as you’d expect from a partnership with Masterpiece Theater, rendering Pierrepoint palatable as a decent, principled chap who was just doing his job.
The shocker near the end is one of the more heartbreaking pieces of cinema in quite a while.
An emotionally powerful drama about the dirty business of capital punishment.
The movie hits its message a little too emphatically, and its narrative unwinds a little too schematically. But Spall's performance, along with that of Juliet Stevenson as his devoted and sometimes credulous spouse, keeps things grounded.
The filmmakers fall through their own trapdoor, using the hangman's story to fashion a preachy anti-capital punishment message movie that seems at odds with the man himself.
Based on their press materials, they think they have made a film damning capital punishment and exploring Britain's most famous executioner. In fact, they haven't. But they have made a film of artistic beauty and endless fascination.
Effectively shows how an executioner kills over six hundred people before coming to end of his rope.
The movie grows more compelling in the latter half as British public opinion turns against capital punishment and Pierrepoint begins to have his own doubts.
Whether the real Pierrepoint, who died in 1992, had a clear conscience, the portly Spall creates the perfect impression of a quietly decent, proud man who is overwhelmed by unwanted celebrity and by one too many jerking ropes.
The shot angles, the gray look of the film as a whole and Timothy Spall’s spectacular and understated performance as Pierrepoint make this one of the most powerful anti-capital punishment films I’ve seen.
May 31, 2007:
Critical Consensus: "Knocked Up" Is A Knockout; "Mr. Brooks," "Gracie" Less So
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