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
Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman (2007)
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Reviews Counted:17
Fresh:15
Rotten:2
Average Rating:7.2/10
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,... 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, a grocery deliveryman who decides to apply for his father's old job--a hangman for the British courts. Soon he is perfecting the execution procedure, fulfilling his duties in record time and with no problems whatsoever. Though proud of his success, Pierrepoint prefers to keep it to himself, not even telling his wife, Anne (Juliet Stevenson), what he does when he leaves the house for days at a time. But when General Montgomery himself (Clive Francis) asks Pierrepoint to execute dozens of Nazis who have been sentenced to death, for the first time Pierrepoint starts questioning what he does, and soon his relatively calm, quiet world is turned upside down. Based on a true story, PIERREPOINT: THE LAST HANGMAN is a gripping period drama, bathed in grays by cinematographer Danny Cohen and production designer Candida Otton. Spall is mesmerizing as Pierrepoint, his slow walk and penetrating eyes filling the screen. Stevenson is excellent as his loyal wife, standing by him through thick and thin. PIERREPOINT is directed with careful precision by Adrian Shergold, a longtime actor and television director who trained at the feet of Mike Leigh, who has cast Spall in many of his own films. And Eddie Marsan excels as Tish, a compatriot of Pierrepoint's who lands himself in a very nasty bit of trouble. [More]
Starring: Timothy Spall, Juliet Stevenson, Eddie Marsan, James Corden
Starring: Timothy Spall, Juliet Stevenson, Eddie Marsan, James Corden, Christopher Fulford, Tobias Menzies, Tim Woodward
Director: Adrian Shergold
Director: Adrian Shergold
Screenwriter: Bob Mills, Jeff Pope
Producer: Christine Langan
Composer: Martin Phipps
Studio: IFC Films
Reviews for Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman
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.
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.
At once desperately grim and unnervingly gripping, providing an exacting sense of the detail and procedure that went into death by hanging.
The actors' understated performances, coupled with an underwritten screenplay, ultimately leave the audience dangling.
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.
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