88
TV Guide Magazine by Ken Fox
British actor Timothy Spall gives a shattering performance as Albert Pierrepoint.
Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman
Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
- United Kingdom,
- United States
- 2005
- · 98m
Director
Adrian Shergold
Cast
Timothy Spall,
Juliet Stevenson,
Eddie Marsan,
Simon Armstrong,
Ann Bell,
Tobias Menzies
Genre
Drama,
History
Following in his father's footsteps, Albert Pierrepoint becomes one of Britain's most prolific executioners, hiding his identity as a grocery deliveryman. But when his ambition to be the best inadvertently exposes his gruesome secret, he becomes a minor celebrity and faces a public outcry against the practice of hanging.
Stream Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman
What are critics saying?
88
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
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.
80
Los Angeles Times
At once desperately grim and unnervingly gripping, providing an exacting sense of the detail and procedure that went into death by hanging.
80
Los Angeles Times by Mark Olsen
At once desperately grim and unnervingly gripping, providing an exacting sense of the detail and procedure that went into death by hanging.
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Invites viewers to think critically about such weighty concepts as justice, atonement and personal accountability.
75
New York Daily News by Jack Mathews
This is a riveting story about a man who for years moonlighted as an anonymous hangman while holding a day job as a wholesale grocery delivery man.
75
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
This measured bio-production might be viewed as a lesser companion piece to "Vera Drake" -- although in the case of Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman, all the period-piece tastefulness makes for a story more instructive than emotionally tangible.
75
Boston Globe by Ty Burr
Like its hero, the movie doesn't flinch for most of its running time.
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Kamal AL-Solaylee
Invites viewers to think critically about such weighty concepts as justice, atonement and personal accountability.
70
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
In Pierrepoint:The Last Hangman Timothy Spall sinks his teeth into one of the juiciest roles of his career.
70
New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein
Pierrepoint is worth seeing for Shergold's attention to process and for all the ghoulish details.
70
L.A. Weekly by Ella Taylor
Like most television directors, Shergold is good with actors. Jowly, impassive and rigid with righteous dignity, Timothy Spall makes a wonderfully meticulous Pierrepoint.
50
New York Post by V.A. Musetto
You have to wonder just how true to life the melodramatic depiction of these events is, especially since the film was made in partnership with TV's "Masterpiece Theater."
50
The A.V. Club by Noel Murray
Pierrepoint is handsomely crafted and well-acted, but its sense of scale is as constricted as a noose.
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