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The Last Hangman, also entitled Pierrepoint, concerns the life and works of twentieth-century Britain's most prolific and efficient hangman, Albert Pierrepoint, good-natured grocer (and later publican) by day, in his off hours the executioner of over six-hundred people in twenty years: including scores of Nazis condemned at Nuremberg. The film is a bit grim--considering its topic it can't exactly be about sunshine and butterflies, can it?---but it is well-acted, tactfully shot, and certainly pulls few punches in depicting what a hanging is all about. Timothy Spall (Doctor Polidori in Gothic and more recently Peter Pettigrew in the Harry Potter series) takes on the title role and lends professionalism and human complexity to a difficult performance. This isn't a feel good flick but for those with a taste for psychological exploration, history, and the challenging topic of capital punishment (which Pierrepoint himself concluded was about nothing so much as revenge) this quietly disturbing British import is a sleeper worth looking into.