Review of Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman (2005) by Gregory W — 17 Jun 2011

After seeing Timothy Spall in either bit or supporting parts, he comes into his own as Albert Pierrepoint, Britain's chief hangman who developed a quicker technique of hanging condemned people at the gallows. The effects of the death penalty are seen through the eyes of himself, the prison guards, and of course the condemned, who include a wrongfully hanged man (Timothy Evans), a chance acquaintance of his, and Ruth Ellis, whose life story was already a movie, Dance With A Stranger, starring Miranda Richardson.

Spall is sympathetic in his role as Pierrepoint, a human like the rest of us, but someone who leaves that identity whenever he has to take a life. He later comes to realize that he is no better than the people whom he hanged. Yet who should be given a reprieve or get off? Certainly not the Nazi war criminals of Auschwitz and Belsen who committed atrocities, but what about someone like Ruth Ellis, whose crime was a crime of passion, similar to that of Pierrepoint's acquaintance friend James Corbitt?

A thoughtful look at the world of capital punishment in a country that eventually abolished it.