HANGMAN (2000) It could've been worse...it could've had Keanu Choosing between this and The Watcher wasn't much of a choice at all. Lou Diamond Phillips and James Spader pretty much cancel each other out, but hmm, Madchen Amick or Keanu Reeves, gosh, which one...well, duh. Not that Hangman is a good movie; it isn't. Actually, it's pretty bad. But I have no regrets. I'd rather watch a bad movie where I get to look at Madchen Amick than a (reportedly) bad movie where I have to listen to Keanu "Whoa!" Reeves. As much as I want to hold it against The Matrix for reviving his then-well-on-its-way-to-selling-phone-cards-on-TV-obscurity career, at least that movie was bright enough to not let him talk too much. As you might guess from the title, there's a serial killer out there, killing people by hanging them, and no points for guessing that this killer is taunting the police with internet hangman games where someone gets hung if they don't guess the word. Phillips plays the cop; Amick plays the pill-popping widow of a recent victim. The hangman games are ridiculous; to avoid the possibility of anyone in the audience being able to guess the word before the cops do, director Ken Girotti chooses to only show the words for a split second at a time before the camera zips off, Michael Bay-style. Then the script (by Vladimir Nemirovsky, who suspiciously for the first time elects not to have a cameo) takes care to spell out the difference between "hypocrites" and "Hippocrates". Please, people, make up your minds - is the audience smart or stupid? Hangman is no great shakes as a whodunnit either; they show this guy hanging somebody about ten minutes into the movie, and shows how he relates to (most) everything ten minutes later. And twenty minutes after that, he's caught! You shouldn't have too much trouble figuring out where this is going. It's pretty routine as a police procedural, too ("We've got a trace!" "Where?" "It's our address - he's inside!"), taking one of its plot developments from one of the most famous "locked room" mysteries around. (not that I know the specific story it's based on, if any, but I'd give everything away if I revealed whether or not dry ice is involved) And as a scary serial-killer thriller, forget about it. Don't even get me started on how intense this movie isn't. Phillips does a good job, but Amick, pretty as she might be, turns in one of those performances where the scenes of emotion play less as real emotion than a sarcastic teenager faking it to make some sort of sarcastic-teenager point. Yeah, maybe that's the point. It's still pretty annoying. Features the most pathetic serial-killer victim of all time, who, knowing he's going to be killed by hanging anyway, caves into the killer's demands when threatened with being shot to death (which would of course ruin the killer's plans). Loser. I have no idea where this movie is supposed to be set (there's one establishing shot of a city I didn't recognize), but it appears to have been shot in Toronto...again, you get that "filmed in Canada" vibe about three seconds in. It's not good, it's not bad, and I can't even put my finger on what it is, but it's there. BACK TO THE H's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE