Hangman (2017)

Some films arrive with a sense of occasion. Hangman (2017) did not. Released quietly onto streaming and on-demand platforms without so much as a whisper of a theatrical run, it is a serial killer procedural built around a premise that will be familiar to anyone who spent time in a classroom: a killer whose methods mirror the stages of the children's word game, leaving detectives to piece together the pattern before the final letter is drawn. It is the kind of high-concept pitch that sounds reasonable enough in a pitch room, and the genre has certainly produced worthwhile entries over the years. Films like A Bittersweet Life and Fire in the Sky demonstrate what can be done when a crime or mystery premise is handled with a degree of care and conviction. Whether Hangman clears that bar is, of course, the question.

The film was directed by Johnny Martin, a stuntman and stunt coordinator by trade who had worked extensively in the industry before stepping behind the camera as a director. Hangman was produced through a collaboration between Meyers Media Group, Patriot Pictures, and Cheyenne Enterprises, the latter being a production company with ties to Al Pacino himself, which makes the whole enterprise something of a personal project, however modest it looks on screen. The script draws on well-worn serial killer thriller conventions, the grizzled detective, the criminal profiler brought in from outside, the race to prevent the next murder, all familiar furniture from the genre's busier decades. At 98 minutes, it is at least a reasonably lean production, even if lean and efficient are not always the same thing.

The cast is headed by Al Pacino, an actor whose career spans some of the most celebrated performances in American cinema, and whose later years have brought a more uneven run of projects. Fans of his work will find plenty of earlier form covered elsewhere on this site, including Insomnia, Cruising, and Scent of a Woman. Here he plays the veteran detective, opposite Karl Urban as a criminal profiler and Brittany Snow as a documentary filmmaker embedded with the investigation, a device presumably intended to add a layer of journalistic scrutiny to the procedural structure. Sarah Shahi and Joe Anderson round out the principal cast. On paper, it is a polished but unremarkable ensemble for a film of this type.

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

I want to stress that none of this comes from a place of wanting Pacino to fail. Quite the opposite. When you have spent time with the films that showed what he is genuinely capable of, sitting through something like this is quietly dispiriting rather than entertaining. Karl Urban does what he can with thin material, and the documentary-crew device never earns its place in the story. If you have a couple of hours and a strong appetite for the serial killer genre, there are far better places to spend them. Hangman can stay where it landed: quietly on a server somewhere, undisturbed.

Rating: ★★  | Year: 2017  | Watched: 2025-08-27

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Trailer

▶ Watch the official trailer for Hangman (2017) on YouTube

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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)