Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman

This British-made biopic sketches the life of England's most famous hangman, Albert Pierrepoint (character actor Timothy Spall in a nuanced performance), but loses its dramatic effectiveness with a clumsily interpolated plea to rethink the death penalty. A mild-mannered man who lived with his widowed mother and married a respectable local woman, Pierrepoint followed in the family tradition by hanging people for His (later Her) Majesty's Prison Service. The film depicts his double life, as Pierrepoint divides his time between working as a grocer's deliveryman and a Lancashire pub landlord, while also traveling around the United Kingdom to perform his…uh…other job. After finally revealing his secret occupation to his wife Anne (Juliet Stevenson), Pierrepoint is later outed by the media and caught up in a personal tragedy that forces him to question his role as the Queen's executioner. Spall's performance accentuates Pierrepoint's dignity, a man who is exacting in his efforts to provide his unfortunate “customers” a quick, clean death and scrupulous aftercare. Unfortunately, the film's eventual lurch into melodramatic territory is also accompanied by an anti-death preachiness that shifts the focus from the executioner to the system of which he's just a small part. Optional. (E. Hulse)