Hey Karl Urban, it’s STARBURST here. We wanted to say hi and have a little chat about your new movie Hangman. Oh, we loved you in Dredd by the way, you were great. Your one-season series Almost Human was pretty decent, too. And there’s almost no-one we can think of who would have made a better fit as Bones in the new Star Trek films. Yeah, we like a lot of the stuff you’ve done. But not Hangman, Karl. Good grief, this is awful stuff. We know, you probably took the gig because of the chance it gave you to act opposite Al Pacino. It’s just a shame for you Al didn’t repay the favour because he does not give a single solitary shit here. We figured we’d sat through some Al-by-numbers performances before, but he’s barely conscious for much of Hangman.
It certainly wasn’t the script you signed up for. We use ‘script’ in its loosest possible definition here. If we didn’t know that two people (two!) were credited for the words, we’d figure this was the first film scripted by a predictive text app constructed entirely from bad serial killer movies. It would explain the dreary inevitability of the back stories for your character and some of the others, too. It’s all been-there, done-that murder set-pieces and hackneyed motivations for the supposedly genius killer. Every emotional beat is unearned, every apparently shocking reveal either telegraphed or crushingly obvious. It’s just a dull, cliched bore.
It was probably fun spending time with Mr Pacino. Maybe you got to hear some stories from him about the great films he’s made. We hope it was worth it, surely knowing you’re all in on making a turkey. When one of the lead actors seems so utterly uninvested in the film they’re making, it’s difficult for an audience to care, too. We guess we have to just let him off though, he’s Al Pacino after all. He was great in so much too, classics like The Godfather films or Heat. There are some other decent actors in this, like Brittany Snow and Sarah Shahi, but they’re just as wasted as you, Karl.
Karl, we hate to do things like this. We don’t like crapping on movies – after all, people got off their arses to make them, and that’s something, eh? But really, no-one should think maybe because it’s got you in it, or Pacino or they like other films like Seven or that type of film, that this might be good, because it isn’t. Anyway, Karl, we really do wish you well and hope your next gig turns out better than this. All the best, STARBURST.
HANGMAN / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: JOHNNY MARTIN / SCREENPLAY: MICHAEL CAISSIE, CHARLES HUTTINGER / STARRING: KARL URBAN, AL PACINO, BRITTANY SNOW, SARAH SHAHI, JOE ANDERSON / RELEASE DATE: JUNE 4TH
