Apprentice (2016)
The hangman
4 June 2016
I don't know how many films about hangmen, and only them, were made during movie history. I remind Jack Smight's TRAVELING EXECUTIONER back in 1970. But this feature from Singapore is a real hit in the face. It draws a portrait of those men, at least in this country where the capital punishment is hanging...It would be interesting to see how the hangmen in the USA proceed with the electric chair or the gas chamber... Anyway, you deal here with a powerful piece of work, accurate, astounding movie pulled by performances that I repeat hit you in the face. The struggle of a new prison guard who becomes the hangman's assistant, long time after his own father was himself executed by the same hangman. Those schemes about forgiveness, guilt or vengeance have already been told a billion times before, but this one, in this very feature, is absolutely unforeseeable. You can't expect what will eventually happen. Impossible. No clichés here. None of them. No bad guys or good ones. No cruel prison wardens or cold executioner scheme, on the contrary, everything is so human. So true. So real.

A real must see.
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