Brad plays HANGMAN (2017), starring Al Pacino & Karl Urban!

Posted on October 29, 2026 by Bradley Crain

I’ve always enjoyed a good serial killer movie. I’ve also always enjoyed actor Al Pacino. So, when I came across the serial-killer thriller HANGMAN and noticed that it starred Pacino, I decided to give it a shot.

HANGMAN follows detectives Will Ruiney (Karl Urban) and Ray Archer (Pacino) as they search for a serial killer who’s murdering people while playing a sick version of the children’s game of the same name. Ruiney’s the detective in charge and he asks for help from Archer, who’s now retired, when some of the clues seem to be linked directly to them both. Complicating matters is the fact that just before the serial murders began, Ruiney was asked to work with New York Times journalist Christi Davies (Brittany Snow), who’s returned to her hometown of Monroe, GA to write a story profiling cops in this day and age. Now, the two cops and the reporter must race against the clock to find the killer as quickly as possible, as he hangs someone different each night and leaves the next cryptic clue.

Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t expecting another movie of the quality of SEVEN or THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, but I expected more than this. On paper, HANGMAN at least sounds like the kind of movie I often like. I love following detectives around as they try to piece together clues and encounter various obstacles and surprises along the way. Throw in the legendary Pacino, who’s played some awesome cops over the years. I first became a huge fan of Pacino with the release of his cop-thriller SEA OF LOVE, not his more legendary roles in THE GODFATHER films. SEA OF LOVE came along at the perfect time for me to discover him in the late 80’s on VHS after he’d taken a multi-year break from the film industry. And Karl Urban is very good when he’s working with the right material. I thought he was great in movies like the recent STAR TREK films and DREDD. And for full disclosure, I love Brittany Snow and think she’s beautiful in the PITCH PERFECT movies, and I’m not ashamed! Unfortunately, when director Johnny Martin tried to put the story, the actors, the action and the mystery all together, what we’re left with is a movie that I didn’t enjoy at all.

The story is ridiculous. Would a reporter for the New York Times be allowed to be so involved in the investigation of the serial killer that she’s allowed to be in the room with the medical examiner while they’re removing hearts and stuff? Would she be allowed to follow the detectives into buildings where the serial killer is and then wander off by herself? Is there any shock that she ends up taken by the Hangman? In a case where a serial killer is carving letters into victims and hanging them in public, wouldn’t there be more people working the case than a current cop, a retired cop, and a Pulitzer-nominated journalist? Apparently not in Monroe, GA. And good grief, when we find out why the serial killer is doing this, it may be the worst excuse for serial murders in film history. I was like, seriously, THIS is why you’ve chosen to hang so many people after practicing your hand carving skills?!! I generally have a lot of patience for cop movies, but the one thing I really struggle with is a story that requires the characters we’re supposed to care about to act stupid in order for the plot to move forward.

As far as Al Pacino is concerned, the man’s a thespian legend who’s starred in some of the greatest movies ever made and nothing can ever take that away from him. But if an alien landed on Earth, and the only thing he knows about Al Pacino is his performance in HANGMAN, that alien would not spread a positive endorsement of the man’s work when he returns to his home galaxy. He turned me off immediately when he tried to affect some kind of Southern accent since the movie’s set in Georgia. Please don’t do that Al, especially since it goes away only to reemerge again late in the film. I don’t want to speculate on exactly how Pacino was enticed to join this film, but I do think that he must have picked up on the fact that it was a dog, and he seems completely disinterested. Karl Urban probably fares best in the acting department, even though his character does a lot of dumb stuff, and even though he’s about as one-note as it gets. Yet, he’s so serious that it actually kind of works with all the incompetently absurd things going on with this movie. As for Brittany Snow, after seeing this, I still think that she’s beautiful in the PITCH PERFECT movies.

I don’t want it to sound like I’m coming down too hard on the film or its director. I actually enjoyed Martin’s vigilante-themed film from the same year, VENGEANCE: A LOVE STORY, which starred Nicolas Cage. But the truth is that I’m generally easy to please, because I can appreciate a ridiculous genre thriller when it knows it’s ridiculous and has some fun with it, and I can also appreciate a dark, disturbing serial killer movie that gets under my skin and guts me emotionally. Unfortunately, dear readers, in this case, HANGMAN does neither, and I think it sucks.

Non-Fiction Review: Disaster Movies by Michael Rose and Glenn Kay

Posted on October 19, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s the only thing scarier than being trapped in a real-life disaster?

Being trapped in a disaster movie!

First published in 2006, the full name of this guide to the disaster genre is Disaster Movies: A Loud, Long, Explosive, Star-Studded Guide to Avalanches, Earthquakes, Floods, Meteors, Sinking Ships, Twisters, Viruses, Killer Bees, and Alien Attacks In The Cinema. That title tells you pretty much everything you need to know about this affectionate but likably snarky look at all the movies that have been made about earthquakes, fires, torandoes, and …. well, basically all the stuff listed in the title.

On a movie-by-movie basis, this guide reviews disaster movies that are both well-known and obscure. All of the big ones — Airport, Towering Inferno, Titanic, Independence Day, Poseidon Adventure — are listed here but, even more importantly, so are the obscure ones. In fact, the book features a lot of films that you might not have heard about but will probably want to track down after you’ve read about them. The reviews are respectful to the conventions of the genre while also acknowledging the obvious, i.e., a lot of these are not good films. But the authors understand that sometimes, a bad disaster film can be even more enjoyable than a good one. The Poseidon Adventure is a classic of sorts but how about Beyond The Poseidon Adventure? How about Flood!, a film so exciting that it even has an exclamation mark in the name? How about Avalanche, the best of the snowy disaster films? What about Meteor? If love The Swarm but you can’t appreciate Meteor, I don’t know what to tell you.

Disaster Movies is a well-written guide. Most readers will discover the existence of at least one film that they previously knew nothing about. And, hopefully, they’ll be inspired to watch a few of the film reviewed in this book. In a disaster, it’s always helpful to be prepared.

Insomina File No. 16: Kill The Messenger (dir by Michael Cuesta)

Posted on June 4, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

Last night, if you were awake and unable to get any sleep at 1:45 in the morning, you could have turned over to Cinemax and watched the 2014 conspiracy thriller, Kill The Messenger.

Kill The Messenger opens with one of those title cards that assures us that the movie we’re about to see is based on a true story. We are then introduced to Gary Webb (Jeremy Renner), a California-based reporter who we know is a rebel because he has a precisely trimmed goatee. Gary is interviewing a suspected drug smuggler (Robert Patrick) at the smuggler’s luxurious mansion. Suddenly, the DEA storms the house, shouting insults and roughly throwing everyone to the ground, including Gary. It’s actually exciting and promising opening, one that perfectly establishes both Gary as a truth seeker and the U.S. government as an invading army that’s fighting a war that’s full of collateral damage.

Gary, of course, has nothing to do with smuggling drugs. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. If he was treated unfairly by the DEA, it’s just because the government is serious about winning the war on drugs!

Or is it?

Following up on a tip, Gary comes across evidence that, in order to raise money for pro-Amercian rebels in Central America, the CIA not only helped to smuggle drugs into the U.S. but also arranged for the drugs to largely be sold in poor, minority neighbors where, in theory, no one would notice or care.

When the story is finally published, Gary is briefly a celebrity. Not surprisingly, the government denies his accusations and start tying to discredit him. However, Gary also finds himself being targeted by his fellow journalists. Angry over being outscooped by a relatively unknown reporter, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post both launch their own investigations. Instead of investigating Gary’s allegations, they jealously and viciously investigate Gary himself.

Soon, both Gary’s career and his family are falling apart and Gary finds himself growing more and more paranoid…

Remember when everyone was expecting Kill The Messenger to be a really big deal? It was due to come out towards the end of 2014, right in the middle of Oscar season. Jeremy Renner was being talked up as a contender for best actor. Then the film came out, it played in a handful of theaters for a week or two, and then it sunk into obscurity. Some commentators even complained that Focus Features buried the release of Kill The Messenger and that the film was ignored because of its leftist politics…

Of course, it’s just as probable that Focus Features realized that The Theory of Everything was more likely to charm audiences than a movie that suggested the U.S. government was behind the drug epidemic.

Or it could have just been that, despite telling a potentially intriguing story, Kill The Messenger was an oddly bland film. Other than one scene in which he admits to cheating on his wife, Gary Webb is portrayed as being such a saint that it actually causes the film to lose credibility. (Don’t get me wrong. For all I know, he was a saint. But, from a cinematic point of view, sainthood is never compelling.) This is one of those earnest films that gets so heavy-handed that, even if you agree with what the movie is saying, you still resent being manipulated. (Of course, some of us have grown so cynical about the media that we automatically doubt the veracity any movie that opens with those dreaded words: “Based on a true story.”) Watching Kill The Messenger, one gets the feeling that a documentary about Gary Webb would probably be more compelling (and convincing) than a fictionalized dramatization.

(Unfortunately, if you think it’s difficult to get an audience to watch a movie that suggested the U.S. government was behind the drug epidemic, just try to get them to watch a documentary about … well, anything. I know most of our readers would probably happily watch a documentary but that’s because y’all are the best and a thousand times better than the average person. Love you!)

Here’s what did work about Kill The Messenger: the performances. Jeremy Renner, who also produced this film, gives an excellent performance as Gary, especially in the scenes where he realizes that both the government and the press are now conspiring about him. Rosemarie DeWitt has the traditionally thankless role of being the supportive wife but she still does a good job. And finally, Ray Liotta shows up for one scene and is absolutely chilling in that way that only Ray Liotta can be.

Kill The Messenger doesn’t quite work but, thanks to the cast, it is, at the very least, a watchable misfire.

Previous Insomnia Files: