Review of Hangmen Also Die! (1943) by Martin T — 01 Jun 2010
Well, I'll be damned. A movie where I DON'T hate Walter Brennan's guts. As opposed to his usual Western persona (the doddering, cranky, heavily mannered, oafish, unfunny comic relief who looks like he smells very, very bad) here he's quite dignified.
The film is a grim wartime political thriller based on the true story of a Reich official assassinated in Czechoslovakia. Based VERY loosely, however, as the events in the movie have little to do with reality.
Directed by Fritz Lang and written by Bertolt Brecht, their hearts are in the right place. But if we're going call out movies for being overly propagandistic, we can't exclude those we happen to agree with.
This is really heavy-handed, black/white, good/evil stuff. The camerawork is sophisticated, the script is not. Still, it's a solid thriller that manages to be sufficiently gripping despite its lengthy running time.
Lang pulls off some marvelous shots. And besides, it's hard to get too worked up about anti-Nazi propaganda, no matter how ham-fisted. It's closer to the truth about Nazis than most other movies from the same period.
This review of Hangmen Also Die! (1943) was written by Martin T on 01 Jun 2010.
Hangmen Also Die! has generally received positive reviews.
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