Starring: Carl Urban, Brittany Snow, and Al Pacino
Director: Johnny Martin
Rating: Four of Ten Stars
A retired police detective (Pacino), a criminal profiler (Urban), and an investigative journalist (Snow) are drawn into a twisted game by a serial killer with ties to the past of one or more of them.
"Hangman" is a lazily written movie that stands at the intersection between the thriller, the police procedural, and the horror movie, in that it has elements of all three genres and deploys them all in a mediocre fashion. The cast gives the weak script the performances it deserves, with no one being especially good or bad... although Pacino pretty much just walks through a role he's probably played a dozen times in his career, so I suppose he gets a point for consistency and predictability if you're watching because you're a fan of his.
Although purely mediocre for most of its running time, it's the last five seconds that push the movie down from the low-end of average to just bad due to a misguided attempt to tack on a shock ending, or maybe leave the door open for a sequel. Whatever the motivation for the truly stupid final moment, it wipes away what little "Hangman" had going for it.
Unless you come across this turkey late night on cable, or you've watched everything there is to see on Amazon Prime or Netflix, you should avoid "Hangman." It is not worth your time.
