HEAVY MESSAGE DOES IN 'THE LAST HANGMAN'.

Byline: Glenn Whipp

Film Critic

Albert Pierrepoint knew a thing or two about hangings, dispatching a good 450 or so people between 1932 to 1956 as England's most efficient executioner. The British-made movie "Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman" doesn't show all 450 hangings, but it doesn't shy away from them, either. The man, after all, prided himself on his professionalism, a mastery that allowed him to lead a condemned man to the gallows and hang him before the ash on his cigar had a chance to grow.

Pierrepoint is a remarkable character, a man most knew only as a grocery deliverer until he became a minor celebrity after hanging some 200 Nazi war criminals following the end of the second world war. It's hard to botch his story, and the stately, workmanlike "Pierrepoint" hits all the expected stops.

But the filmmakers fall through their own trapdoor, using the hangman's story to fashion a preachy anti-capital punishment message movie that seems at odds with the man himself.

The movie's greatest asset is Timothy Spall's extraordinarily controlled performance as Pierrepoint. English reserve is legendary, but Spall turns it into a science. "When I walk into that cell, I leave Albert Pierrepoint outside," Spall says in one of the man's rare moments of introspection. "I never mix the two."

Pierrepoint's later notoriety makes that kind of compartmentalization a tougher trick. The condemned now know him by name. People call him "Pierrepoint the Murderer." Cracks start to form in the man's hard facade.

But the filmmakers aren't content with making the movie a devastating character study. They want to slam home a message, too, and they do so with a ridiculously contrived third-act plot development that insults one's intelligence.

Fact is, Pierrepoint eventually retired from his line of work over a monetary dispute, not a crisis of conscience. He sold his story to a newspaper, happily revealing the last moments of the more infamous people he hanged. It was only much later, when he wrote his autobiography in 1974, that he came out against capital punishment, writing that "executions solve nothing and are only an antiquated relic of a primitive desire for revenge."

The movie ignores any and all contradictions, though, turning Pierrepoint into a man that fits its message. That's bad history, and not particularly good filmmaking, either.

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com

PIERREPOINT: THE LAST HANGMAN - Two and one half stars

(R: disturbing images, nudity, brief sexuality)

Starring: Timothy Spall.

Director: Adrian Shergold.

Running time: 1 hr. 35 min.

Playing: Laemmle's One Colorado in Pasadena; Laemmle's Sunset 5 in West Hollywood.

In a nutshell: England's most efficient hangman makes for a fascinating subject, but what could have been a devastating character study turns into a preachy message movie.

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Photo:

Albert Pierrepoint (Timothy Spall) prepares the noose for Ruth Ellis (Mary Stockley) -- convicted of killing her lover -- in "Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman." Ellis was the last woman hanged in the U.K.