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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 CriticA genuine and skillful account of one of Britain's most morally ambiguous working-class characters.
Dark but absorbing.
A completely engaging film. It's all about performance, and Timothy Spall is riveting as the earnest hangman. If you're desperate for a movie that has nothing to do with sequels or product placement, look no further.
An emotionally powerful drama about the dirty business of capital punishment.
Very much a bookend to Vera Drake in its mixture of post war British reserve and ugly reality. [Actor] Spall makes it work, creating a little man with big and terrible secrets.
the end result feels like business as usual done by-the-book.
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.
...a powerful pairing of work by two terrific actors [Spall and Stevenson].
There is a great deal of food for thought in a film that personalizes the effects of the death penalty on both the executed and the executioner.
Compelling, powerful filmmaking.
Handles capitol punishment in a similar way that "Vera Drake" tackled the abortion issue ... allows Timothy Spall's resplendent dramatic chops to shine.
The key to the film is in the performances by Spall and Stevenson -- and by Marsan. The utter averageness of the characters, their lack of insight, their normality, contrasts with the subject matter in an unsettling way.
Top CriticPierrepoint 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.
Shergold can't quite pull off tricky balancing act between understated working-class poetic miserablism, in the manner of acknowledged exemplar Vera Drake, and an issue-based melodrama's demands for a flashy third-act.
Top CriticDirector Adrian Shergold and screenwriters Jeff Pope and Bob Mills take certain liberties with the facts of Pierrepoint's notorious career, but only to offer better insight into his complex personality.
What the film does have, however, is the courage of its dark convictions; it’s a bleak subject and, commendably, the director doesn’t shy away from it.
In 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.
As this sad, shambling antihero swings from one pole to the other on the issue of capital punishment, you are inclined to follow every step of the way toward his tragic enlightenment.
Top Critic
May 31, 2007:
Critical Consensus: "Knocked Up" Is A Knockout; "Mr. Brooks," "Gracie" Less So
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