I sometimes wonder why mostly older films are being hailed as the "best film ever made". Citizen Kane, the Godfather Trilogy, and so on. But why can't a fairly contemporary film be the best one ever made? I believe that a contemporary work can be just as good as the great classics - simply because the cinema industry must inevitably have evolved during the many decades since its inception. If you look at many older films that are considered to be very great, you can see that the quality of the work is not good enough to really engage modern viewers. For example the TV-film "The Bunker" features a miscast Anthony Hopkins as Adolf Hitler, some poor acting at places, unrealistic sets and shoddy craftsmanship through the entire thing. This is probably not due to any incompetence on the behalf of the film makers or the actors, but rather a result of time and money issues. Yet this TV film has only a 0.1 lesser rating on IMDb than "The Last Hangman." It seems to me that contemporary films that are actually not that good are often over rated because of massive budgets, distribution networks and incredibly skilled marketing. One example is the film "Avatar", which suffers from a horrible script that simply doesn't make sense. It truly does deserve the epithet "Dances With Smurfs" and will probably be destined for future oblivion. According to me, Avatar is the epithet of a brain dead popcorn movie that simply doesn't summon up any meaningful emotions. A good example of this is "La guerre du feu" of 1981 - a (probably) horribly over-budgeted and over-marketed disaster that features some very strange and poor acting. This film has the exact same rating on IMDb as "The Last Hangman". But who remembers it today? I dare you to watch this film without starting to laugh at the Neanderthal people. And I don't really think that is the effect that the director was after...
In contrast, "The Last Hangman" is a superbly directed and acted film that simply knocks out all of its competition. It features Timothy Spall, who stands out as one of the greatest actors of his generation. I should warn you that this may not be an easy movie to watch. The scene where the character Pierrepoint tells his wife about hanging his friend Tish left me completely devastated. But I believe that this film is a very strong argument against the death penalty. Perhaps Pierrepoint realizes, at the end, that you can kill people - but you can't un-kill them.
In contrast, "The Last Hangman" is a superbly directed and acted film that simply knocks out all of its competition. It features Timothy Spall, who stands out as one of the greatest actors of his generation. I should warn you that this may not be an easy movie to watch. The scene where the character Pierrepoint tells his wife about hanging his friend Tish left me completely devastated. But I believe that this film is a very strong argument against the death penalty. Perhaps Pierrepoint realizes, at the end, that you can kill people - but you can't un-kill them.