HANGMAN: Where’s The Dignity?

If you hand someone a pile of cow manure and ask them to make dinner, no matter how it’s sliced, diced or mixed up and, even if Gordon Ramsey is cooking it, in the end, it’s still going to be a stinking pile of manure.

Same goes for films. A great script, like a great recipe, is the literal chemical makeup of a great film. If a high level of care, respect, talent and practice isn’t put into the writing, everything else about the film will fail. You can add legendary actors; light the scenes just right; add all the flashy special effects you can afford, but if a script stinks, you’ll still have a bad film.

Why, oh why then, does Hollywood keep greenlighting cow manure? The Reverend David Green (Steve Coulter), in Hangman, sums it up best with the line, “Frankly, I don’t understand myself.”

Someone is Knocking, But No One’s Home

Karl Urban plays Detective Will Ruiney, an irritable, small-town cop, whose wife was murdered. He comes home one day to find her dead in their bedroom with a big letter “V” carved on her chest. No one has been able to help give him any clues on her case.

One year later, he’s called to the scene of a murder with a hanged victim, whose chest has also been carved with a letter, outside an elementary school. Even though he has been racking his and everyone else’s brain about his wife’s murder over the past year, it doesn’t instantly dawn on him that these crimes could be related, because, stupefyingly, his wife wasn’t hung. This is just one of countless irresponsible and downright lazy script choices throughout this film.

The killer leaves Ruiney’s and his ex-partner’s badge numbers carved on a desk, inside the elementary school as a clue. Somehow Ruiney knows to go inside the school to find this clue, even though it is night, locked up and only one other cop has, so far, shown up on scene. Somehow though, noticing the blatant similarities between the two murders leaves him stumped.

He then goes to his ex-partner, the retired Ray Archer (Al Pacino), seeking help. Archer, whose only life now is sitting in his car watching people and doing crossword puzzles in Latin, agrees to come with Ruiney to check out the body at the coroners (Hmm, I wonder if that Latin knowledge will come in handy later, because so many people do crosswords in Latin).

In the midst of all of this, throw in Brittany Snow; who plays, Christi Davies, a journalist that somehow gets permission to ride along with Ruiney and view the murder scenes, because she wants to study all of the recent “tension between civilians and cops”, even though that isn’t at all what this story is about, and you’ve got one heck of a mess. Hang on to yourselves cause it only gets worse!

No Need For Sherlock Holmes!

Writers Micheal Caissie and Charles Huttinger continue their frustrating audience assault for the next 88 minutes, bumbling their way through a plot with so many cliches and holes it makes you wonder if they knew what was happening as they wrote it.

From the obvious plot giveaways narrated by the actors; clues to the story that are shown onscreen for so long we may as well have been beaten over the head with them; painfully awkward pregnant pauses by the actors, who seem to be improvising their way through; to Pacino‘s character, who’s supposed to be the 35 year veteran of the police force, using all of his “wisdom” to figure out that one of their next leads is in the river, with the only piece of information being that a victim’s body was wet. Of course! It must be the river, because there’s no other possible way a body can get wet!

In a different scene, Snow‘s character is allowed to snoop around Ruiney’s open office while he’s gone, without getting into trouble. She finds a massive clue from Ruiney’s wife’s murder file, necessary for the story, just laying in his unlocked desk drawer right on top! No cops happen to walk by, and even though Pacino is familiar with this particular file, case and, supposedly loved Ruiney’s wife “like his own daughter”, he reacts like this information came out of the blue with an ‘Oh Damn, we missed that one!’ reaction. Good thing we have a nosy journalist on the case who’s allowed to look anywhere she wants in the police station!

Then, Pacino has to break the “news” to Ruiney, that the carving on his dead wife’s chest was a letter and that they missed it. Ruiney was the one that found his wife’s body and has the case in his desk! How doesn’t he know this?? Another scene shows a victim who’s suffered a shot to the head, and pictures all over the wall that leads veteran Archer to proclaim,’This must be the killer! It’s probably over!’, when we all know it isn’t.

To top it all off, near the end of the story, after five out of ten letters of the Hangman’s puzzle are given and the puzzle is shown all over television, no one, not even a random Wheel of Fortune fan, can figure out the word? This must be the sloppiest police force In. The. World.

The Biggest Mystery of All

Why is Al Pacino in this?

Was he on hallucinatory medication? Was he being held against his will? Did someone pull a Godfather on him, threatening that “either his brains or his signature would be on the contract”? The most infuriating part of this film is not just the fact that it got greenlit, but that he is in it. An Oscar-winning, legendary hero of the acting world took time out of his day, not only to read this script, but also agreed to be a part of it. I am beside myself. He’s the only reason I agreed to watch it myself and I feel duped.

Forgive me my sarcasm throughout this review, dear reader, but Hollywood has an unbelievable penchant for wasting money. In an industry, where practically zero women, even the really talented ones, can get work on a film as a screenwriter, Caissie has two MORE writing projects in the works as we speak. Also in an industry gagging for original content, not adapted from a comic, novel or video game, this is one of the “originals” that gets chosen. Hollywood continues to find new and amazing ways to flabbergast me every day, and I’ve been at this a while.

Does no one, from the producers who green light and the actors that sign on, to the distributors who choose what films to pick up, care about their choices or reputations? I’ve, personally, been working for many years on my craft and also on being meticulous about my professional choices. Paid, or unpaid, I care about everything that has my name on it.

Director James Hughes, recently posted on Twitter: “I have turned down Directing a U.K. feature film next month, because the locked script was not good enough. We have to be proud of the projects we are part of. You have to stay true to your voice. If you lose it, no one will ever care what projects you are part of.”

I couldn’t agree more. Why aren’t there many more artists in our industry standing for principles over a paycheck? Don’t tell me Hollywood doesn’t have the money to do better. Why keep adding to the ever-growing trash heaps piling up and festering throughout the world, when you have the platform to lift the human spirit and change the world for better?

There are no refunds on film tickets and rentals, nor on the couple of hours of life it steals. Let me save you some time and a bit of your hard earned money movie lovers, because I care, and, because it never seems to bother Hollywood to take it without delivering.

Hangman: Conclusion

Take every detective/murder-mystery you’ve ever seen, mish-mash and highlight all of the overused one-liners; add the head patting, “honey” calling, sexism toward the female characters trying their “best”; sprinkle on awe-inspiringly boring dialogue and conclusions; bake it into a spoof of a detective story and you’ve got Hangman. In this case though, an actual spoof would’ve been more entertaining.

Now, someone please hand me the appropriate pill to put me back into The Matrix, because this reality simply hurts.

Hangman is available to download on ITunes, Amazon Prime Video and Google Play.