American Hangman is a 2019 thriller about an unidentified man who posts a live feed on social media showing that he has kidnapped two strangers and intends to kill one before the day is out.
Of all the films he’s been in, I actually got my first real appreciation of Donald Sutherland in Ron Howard‘s 1991 drama Backdraft, where he played a fire-obsessed maniac behind bars. He was the best part of the film and inspired me to dig deeper into his filmography, where I learned, of course, he’s been great at his craft since the 1960s. Now, many years later, I have long since become a fan of just about anything he does, even in movies that don’t quite take advantage of his immeasurable presence.
To discover that he would star in Wilson Coneybeare‘s latest chiller American Hangman was a bit jarring, and I’ll admit, a little worrisome. What would he be doing in this kind of movie? Now that I’ve seen it, I can safely say that what he does do is a singular and crucial thing: he saves it. American Hangman is a dark and often pedantic exercise that reaches for a larger criticism while not always getting there, despite a few clever moments that hit on target.
We open in the bowels of a dank basement, two men bound in gunny sacks are dragged into the room. One is Ron (Paul Braunstein), a middle class man in work boots, angry and scared. The other is Oliver Straight (Donald Sutherland), cool, composed and clearly intelligent, assessing every move in evaluating why he is here and what the intentions are of his captor. He is Henry David Cole (Vincent Kartheiser), a wiry young man who has set up a bank of live feed cameras and begins to stream the two men, establishing that his actions are not staged, suddenly killing Ron as proof. He then sets up a trial to judge Straight, who we learn is a retired judge himself, leaving it up the fast-growing audience to be the jury.
An independent low budget film, American Hangman is at its core, an ambitious effort with a couple of good performances down in the basement. Sutherland and Kartheiser (who many will recognize for his work on Mad Men) are well matched, arguing over the rule of law in the case of a man who was convicted of a capital crime, the outcome having some significance to both men. These verbal bouts are smart and compelling, with Sutherland absolutely dominating the banter as Cole lets social media vote on rulings. That’s interesting.
Where it goes a bit off the rails is when we leave the confines of the room, Coneybeare constantly jumping from Straight and Cole to the police trying to find the location, a local news team covering the event, and a coffee shop-type pub filled with patrons hooked on the mock trial, not too mention a hacker working for the cops. These numerous segments hold our hand too much, trying to give backstory to the growing relationship between the killer and the judge. It’s distracting and unnecessary as the movie keeps trying to slip in twists that don’t really have the shock value intended. This works better when it’s a game of tag between Cole and Straight, losing momentum every time we exit their cause.
It’s easy to see what Coneybeare is aiming for, taking shots at the alleged broken judicial system and social media viralism. Thankfully, after a gruesome start, it abandons that angle in favor of discourse, which might actually turn some viewers off, looking to get a bit more torture porn. It’s just not that sustainable though, and if it weren’t for Sutherland’s superbly nuanced performance, and sturdy work from Kartheiser, his might have been a pass.