Hangman

Name: Hangman
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Crime
Released: December 22, 2017
Duration: 98 min
Rating: 31
Cast: Al Pacino, Brittany Snow, Chelle Ramos, Jermaine Rivers, Joe Anderson

2017

METASCORE

Generally unfavorable reviews based on 8 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally unfavorable reviews based on 20 Ratings

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3.8

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3.8	User Score Generally unfavorable reviews based on 20 Ratings

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Hangman

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Movie Details & Credits

Lionsgate Home Entertainment | Release Date: December 22, 2017 | R

Starring: Al Pacino, Brittany Snow, Chelle Ramos, Jermaine Rivers, Joe Anderson, Jules Haven, Karl Urban, Matt Mercurio, Michael Papajohn, Odessa Rae, Sarah Shahi, Steve Coulter, Viviana Chavez

Summary: Decorated homicide detective Ray Archer (Al Pacino) partners with criminal profiler Will Ruiney (Karl Urban) to catch one of the city's notoriously vicious serial killers, who is playing a twisted version of murder using the child's game… Hangman, while journalist Christi Davies (Brittany Snow) reports on the crime spree, shadowing theDecorated homicide detective Ray Archer (Al Pacino) partners with criminal profiler Will Ruiney (Karl Urban) to catch one of the city's notoriously vicious serial killers, who is playing a twisted version of murder using the child's game… Hangman, while journalist Christi Davies (Brittany Snow) reports on the crime spree, shadowing the detectives.… Expand

Director: Johnny Martin

Genre(s): Mystery, Thriller, Crime

Rating: R

Runtime: 98 min

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Metascore

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Critic Reviews

Richard Roeper

Dec 19, 2017

In its own cheesy and entertaining way, Hangman kept me guessing throughout Read full review

Frank Scheck

Dec 21, 2017

Despite his extensive action movie experience, director Johnny Martin (Vengeance: A Love Story) fails to invest the violence with much suspense. He also doesn't elicit the best work from his performers, with Urban and Snow unable to overcome their characters' stereotypical aspects. Read full review

Craig D. Lindsey

Dec 21, 2017

Even with all its grisly, gory absurdity, Hangman actually tries to be a sincere salute to all the badge-wearing men and women who risk their lives on the regular to catch bad guys. But you may not take a single frame of this movie seriously. Read full review

Ben Kenigsberg

Dec 21, 2017

Hangman is riddled with holes — blank spaces, if you will. Read full review

Joe Leydon

Dec 21, 2017

If Hangman were just a tad less formulaic, and settled for a slightly smaller body count, it might pass muster as the pilot movie for a basic cable police procedural. Read full review

Movie Nation Roger Moore

Nov 27, 2017

Hangman is ridiculous from the start. Read full review

RogerEbert.com Brian Tallerico

Dec 22, 2017

A cheapo “Seven” knock-off that one would be tempted to suggest is beneath the talents of everyone involved, but they knew what they were getting into when they read it. Read full review

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User Reviews

juliankennedy23

Apr 2, 2018

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Hangman: A retired detective (Al Pacino) and a criminal profiler (Keith Urban) join forces to catch a serial killer who is using the children's game hangman as his leitmotif. An intrepid reporter (Britney Snow) has been assigned to tag along as the three try to solve the case while the victims pile up one every twenty-four hours. Can they solve the puzzle in time?

The Good: Al Pacino. While Keith Urban gives a solid performance considering the dodgy material Al Pacino takes it to a whole new level. For starters Tommy Wiseau has a more believable New Orleans accent than the southern fried nonsense Al is trying to pull off here. Whats more Pacino seems to change his accent scene by scene. Soon the most entertaining part of the movie is what accent is going to show up and what word is he going to add extra syllables to this time.

Pacino, to his credit, isn’t just in paycheck mode but actually gives a sense of world-weariness through facial expressions and ad-libs. Certainly, more character than the one-dimensional script would indicate.

As an example, our intrepid reporter Brittney Snow gives this insufferable and endless speech complete with fake tears about how hard it is to be a cop, how great cops are, and how she asked for this assignment so she could expose the greatness of cops to the general public. It’s the kind of scene you would expect in a John Travolta film about an electrical lineman. At the end of the speech, an incredulous Al Pacino ad-libs a weary yeah great whatever with only his facial expression that is simply the best thing in the movie.

The Bad: The script. The movie is one of those one step behind serial killer procedurals (Think Seven) where the cops have to guess the next victim using clues left behind at the previous crime scene. The fun of such films is that the audience is right there with the cops doing ye olde deduction.

The film simply never gives the audience information to follow along. Honestly, it never gives cops information either. The deductions are along the lines of “Why would he splatter the blood on the roof? Quick get me Central… Hello Central What is the victims birthday? Feb 1st, 1972? My god he is going to strike next at the Red Roof Inn on Route 72 in room 201 I need all cars headed there we only have minutes….” What??? Bonus points off in that at no point do the detectives actually try to solve the hangman game the killer leaves. Idiots.

The direction does the film little favors. The film is well shot (though it does contain a hilarious shot of our three leads emerging from the fog in slow motion as if they are off to fight Doomsday.) but the pacing never allows any tension to rise and seems to be there to cover the giant holes in the script. In the director's defense, I am not sure how one could have shot this without a rewrite and cutting some of the killings.

Or they could have cut one of the characters. Outside of her yay cops speech, Britney Snow seems to have no purpose in the film. We don’t need an audience surrogate since the film clearly could care less about its audience following along. We don’t need a love interest. We don’t need an example of really bad acting.(Sloane Warren has those honors hands down as the coroner. ) Why is she in the movie? What could we be missing? Gee, I wonder whom the serial killer will kidnap at the end of the film?

In Conclusion: This is a not a good film. Brintey Snow Sloane has zero charisma and screen presence, and there is little tension when most of the victims are random and unknown till they are found hanging around. There is a subplot where we need to keep it out the press as if daily lynchings in a mid-sized southern metropolis would ever go unnoticed. There is a sequel bait ending that makes no sense and is apparently there to anger the few audience members slackjawed enough to still be entertained at this point. As Al Pacino would say "Y’all need a better script if the stallions are going mount the mare down by da holla".… Expand

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

drone41

May 20, 2018

Such a poor movie. I don't know why Al Pacino did this, it's so sad. Some episodes of criminal series are far better than this.

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

ahmedaiman1999

Jul 11, 2019

This is not just one of the worst Se7en rip-offs, it's also one of the worst films I've ever seen. Also, I've seen this after only one day of seeing The Emoji Movie!

Two points because:
1) It has one shot that looks good.
2) It wasn't the most boring thing I've seen in my life.

(2/10)

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

Bitash

Sep 8, 2020

I gave it a one cuz I love Pachino and Karl Urban, but I think they were doing the writer and director a favor by being involved in this awful movie.
1. Writing is sooo bad, plot is predictable, could have been good, the script needed to be re written and re written. It has so many holes. 2.I gave it a one cuz I love Pachino and Karl Urban, but I think they were doing the writer and director a favor by being involved in this awful movie.
1. Writing is sooo bad, plot is predictable, could have been good, the script needed to be re written and re written. It has so many holes. 2. The script is so bad that it can’t even be saved by Pachinoas acting, or Karl Urban
3. The news reporter, Brittney snow, has no business being there at EVERY crime scene...very unrealistic that they would allow a reporter follow the cops this close at all times and her presence is useless in way
4. They had Sarah Shahi as the chief police...come on...you look at her and she looks like she is ready for a CoverGirl photo shoot! She is soooooo not believable as a tough police chief! She was icing on cake, I could not watch anymore. Baaad casting. Someone should have cought that… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

ozymandias79

Feb 28, 2018

Al Pacino, Karl Urban, what could go wrong? This by-the-numbers mystery crime thriller is unwatchable. Al Pacino phones in his performance and Karl Urban tries but doesn't have much to work with. The ending that alludes to a sequel is laughable.

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

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