Hangman (2017)
★★ — Hangman (2017)
Hangman arrived in 2017 as a very quiet straight-to-video release, earning just over a hundred thousand dollars at the box office and making little impression beyond that. Director Johnny Martin is primarily a stunt coordinator and second unit director (credits stretching back to the 1980s), and this was only his second feature in the director's chair. Al Pacino, whose theatrical peak was long behind him by this point, had spent much of the 2010s taking roles in modestly budgeted genre pictures of this kind. Karl Urban and Brittany Snow fill out the central trio, though neither was at a particularly high-profile moment in their respective careers. The film was produced through Cheyenne Enterprises, a company Pacino himself is associated with, which explains some of the more curious casting decisions at the top of the bill.
Hangman is a real low point, even for the later, straight-to-VHS-era of Al Pacino’s career. It’s meant to be a gritty 90s-style serial killer thriller, but it’s so poorly written, badly paced, and utterly predictable that it feels like a parody of one. Pacino plays a veteran detective with a leather jacket, a troubled past, and a daughter in peril, basically all his greatest hits shoved into a cheap, lifeless script. The killer’s “clever” riddles are cringey, the dialogue is clunky, and the tension fizzles before it even starts. It’s not just bad, it’s boring. It’s honestly painful to see Pacino, who once commanded the screen in Heat and Serpico, reduced to chewing scenery in a film that feels like it was knocked out in a weekend. The plot holes are massive, the side characters are forgettable, and the whole thing reeks of lazy, straight-to-digital-release desperation. You can practically see the producers ticking off cliches: cop with demons? Check. Killer with a gimmick? Check. Race against the clock? Check. But none of it lands. There’s zero originality here, just a tired rehash of better films done decades ago. It’s a shame because Pacino still tries. Well... he shows up, he growls his lines, he stares intensely at case files, but no amount of charisma can save this mess. Skippable
Rating: ★★ | Year: 2017 | Watched: 2025-08-27
Where to watch (UK)
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Related on Movies With Macca
More with Al Pacino: Scent of a Woman (1992) · Cruising (1980) · Insomnia (2002) · Scarecrow (1973)
More from the 2010s: Wonder (2017) · Beautiful Boy (2018) · The Witch (2015) · What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
More mystery: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · Carnival of Souls (1962) · One Way or Another (1975)
More crime: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Angst (1983) · Stolen Face (1952) · Cairo Station (1958)
