BEFORE: I've kind of hit that part of the year where it's not really about what I want to watch, it's more about watching whatever's going to get me to the next movie that I really want to watch, and that's at least a week away. So yeah, I'll admit it, the linking is kind of driving the bus right now, but if I hit a good movie or two, something that I wasn't really planning to watch but is still moderately enjoyable, I'll take that as a win. Is tonight's film a good movie? A bad movie? Who knows, that should be part of the fun, right?
I've got job interview #2 today, by web meeting, and do I really want to work in a sports stadium, doing some form of concessions? No, not really but I do maybe need to get some concessions experience on my resume if I want to manage a commercial theater someday. That really wasn't a career goal of mine until I got back into working in movie theaters when they all re-opened after the pandemic. I worked at an AMC in the summer of 2021 and I avoided their attempts to teach me how to run concessions, partly because I didn't plan on being there long, and partly because it looked like a lot of work and I was pretty busy sweeping floors and taking out the trash. Then I moved to my current theater job, where there's no concession stand, but people can bring in food from outside if they want. I skated once again, but now I'm kind of paying the price because I wasn't hired at the last cinema I applied to, probably for this reason, I haven't worked selling food since 1988 or so. So I might have to take a crappy stadium concession job for a while just to get some experience in this skill, but if something better comes along in the next month, I'll weasel out of it yet again. If I'm offered this, I'll take it as a temporary safety job - that's a thing, right?
Michael Papajohn carries over from "Unhinged".
THE PLOT: A homicide detective brings his partner out of retirement to help catch a serial killer whose crimes are based on the children's game Hangman.
AFTER: I enjoy puzzles, and I read a monthly puzzle magazine called Games World of Puzzles (it used to be two magazines, one was called Games and one was World of Puzzles, but they merged). I've read this mag since its first issue, which my grandfather handed to me back in like 1977, it usually has everything from crosswords to cryptograms, from word searches to acrostics, and everything in between. Articles and reviews on puzzles, and a monthly contest. (Let me remind you that this blog does NOT accept advertising of any kind, paid or unpaid, so if I say I like something, it's only because I truly like it.). Up until last month, the magazine usually featured a 2-page puzzle called "Solitaire Hangman" - they know that people don't generally solve puzzles in groups, we puzzle nerds are more the loner types, so they re-designed the game of Hangman for individual play. You're given blank spaces for the letters, and when you guess a letter, you match the letter with the number of the word and then it tells you in a chart on the next page whether that letter appears in the word you're working on. But if you guess a letter that's not in the word, you're supposed to draw a piece of the stick figure body hanging from the noose, like in the classic children's game.
It seems that "woke" culture has invaded my favorite puzzle magazine, because in the June issue they re-designed the game as "Boxing Match", now if you guess a wrong letter you're just supposed to put an X in one of six boxes, no more drawing the stick figure who's being executed by hanging, apparently this was too triggering for a small percentage of readers. COME ON! Ok, maybe it's not an appropriate jumping-off point for a kids game, but we're all adult readers and puzzle solvers, can some of us not handle a little stick figure execution once a month? I usually skip this puzzle, but I'm still offended that some Karen (or male Karen) out there probably wrote in and complained, threatened to cancel their subscription to a PUZZLE MAGAZINE unless they removed all implied references to public executions (or solo suicide, honestly we don't really know). Look, maybe the stick figure was a very evil little imaginary drawn guy, maybe he killed 27 other stick figure guys and he deserves capital punishment, OK? Don't draw me into your little snowflake aversion to seeing a stick figure choking to death, anyway YOU can save him, just pick the right letters, OK? Is this really where we find ourselves, where people are more concerned about having to DRAW an imaginary stick figure being hung in a noose than they are about saving the lives of, say, immigrants or homeless people or starving people in another country? THIS is what bothers you? Well I'm not playing "Boxing Match" or whatever this game is supposed to be called now. But maybe focus your hang-ups on what letter games they might be playing in your own kid's school, and leave my puzzle magazine the hell alone. What's next on the cancel culture playlist, "Battleship", "Minesweeper" or the card game "War"? If you come for my cryptic crosswords, I'm going to get really angry, and you won't like me when I'm really angry.
Anyway, there's this film called "Hangman" that also riffs off that classic kids game - but this movie is for adults, because there's a serial killer outside Atlanta, Georgia who's leaving behind a body every 24 hours, with a letter carved into its torso. And there are 10 letters on the Hangman board, so the detectives are expecting that many bodies to turn up. Well, it's going to be a busy week, that's for sure. Well, great, I thought, here's a puzzle and every so often we get another letter, really this is more "Wheel of Fortune" than "Hangman" (see below for more on this) and how many times do I catch the end of "Wheel of Fortune" and I can solve the puzzle, but the dopes playing the game on TV can't? It's like, almost every time, so maybe I should give up on "Jeopardy!" and try out for the easier stuff.
Detective Will Ruiney (pronounced "Rooney", but I assume the spelling is important, he's a ruined man, get it?) is the first (OK, second) on the scene when the first (OK, second) body is found, and wouldn't you know it, it's the day when he's being shadowed by a reporter who wants to do a ride-along. Isn't that always the way? The first victim is a teacher hanged outside her school, with an "O" carved in her body. Which is a bit odd, they somehow all know it's an "O" and not a circle, which you'd think might be the first guess. Inside her classroom are two mannequins staged at desks facing the board, as if they're playing Hangman, and carved into the teacher's desk are Ruiney's badge number and the badge number of his old partner, who is retired, but is brought back in to consult on the case.
The autopsy of the teacher reveals information that leads the detectives (with reporter in tow) to the victim's girlfriend, who's brought in for questioning but tries to commit suicide after the interrogation. OK, well, I guess she's eliminated as a suspect, for now. Further analysis of blood found in the teacher's bedroom leads them to a man who works at a church, and there they find another victim, with another carved letter. That victim is wearing a pig's head, which leads them to a slaughterhouse, and... well, you can probably already see the pattern. They keep finding and analyzing clues, only to arrive at the next scene just a bit too late, but hey, they get another letter, so eventually that's going to form a word, and then we'll have something, right? Umm, yeah, about that, don't get your hopes up. Damn I love puzzles and I was really trying to figure out what the word was going to be, it's somehow impossible AND a letdown at the same time.
What's kind of odd about the pattern is that they KNOW all the killings take place at 11 pm. Why, then, once they figure out the pattern, do the three crime-solvers seem to re-convene at 10 pm every night, this way by the time they figure out where the next hanging is going to be, they haven't left themselves enough time to get there and stop it? Look, I know they need to sleep, we all do, but there are 24 damn hours in a day, if they hit the sack at, say midnight, they can get up at 8 am, have some coffee, a bite to eat, then they've still got like 15 hours to figure out who the next victim is, and then find that person before the noose goes around their neck? OK, maybe these detectives are on the night shift, but even so, let's put in a little overtime here, crime never sleeps, right? Maybe they're working behind the scenes, but the film really only cuts to them the next night, and they don't seem to be working to beat the deadline. It's about time management, guys, the faster you solve this crime the sooner we can all get on with our lives.
Of course, the killer starts to pick victims that are in the orbits of these two detectives, this was personal right from the start. And OF COURSE the life of the reporter is going to be at stake at some point, that's why you have a young pretty character like her in the story in the first place. Halfway through the film, these detectives finally get the bright idea to go through their thousands of cases over the years and try to filter out who from their past might be on the revenge track. This is pretty standard and really, it's fine, I'm just glad it didn't turn out to be one of the two lead detectives behind all the murders. I've just seen that sort of thing too much over the years, it's been played out.
Now, my main beef, my NITPICK POINT over the use of the "Hangman" game in these murders. It just doesn't really work, in the sense that the children's game isn't really reflected here in the correct way. In the traditional game, guessing a wrong letter is bad, it means that one more piece of the hanging man gets drawn, but if a player can guess the right letters in time, the man is spared from the noose, as he's not completely drawn. I know, it's all a stretch, but work with me here. The guy gets hanged after too many WRONG guesses - but there's no guessing of letters here at all, the letters are revealed in the bodies of the victims, and they're the CORRECT letters of the word being formed, so that's all backwards, isn't it? Well, I guess you can cover it by saying that a serial killer can't be expected to think about the logical rules of a game, and he's by definition doing a very illogical thing by killing people, but this is not a true game of "Hangman" because it doesn't follow any of the rules or gameplay properly. Maybe there was no way to do that, but then, if so, PICK ANOTHER GAME.
Also, Detective Archer is, like me, a puzzle guy, we see him doing crosswords throughout the film. It's a bit weird that he never ONCE tries to figure out what the secret word might be, if he's a crossword solver you'd think that would be the first thing he'd try, to gain some insight.
Also, I'm betting that Monroe, Georgia might actually be a pretty nice place to live, and there's probably more murders in this film than that nice little town has seen in, let's say, a decade. Sure enough, Google has informed me that Monroe is "generally a safe and pleasant place to live." I mean, nowhere is the murder rate ZERO, but there it's probably less than what is depicted here. Now, why would a town let someone film a movie like THIS there, which suggests that there's at least one serial killer in the area?
Directed by Johnny Martin (assistant director of "Drive Angry")
Also starring Al Pacino (last seen in "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution"), Karl Urban (last heard in "The Sea Beast"), Brittany Snow (last seen in "X"), Joe Anderson (last seen in "Hercules" (2014)), Sarah Shahi (last seen in "I Don't Know How She Does It"), Sloane Warren (last seen in "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret."), Chelle Ramos (last seen in "The Leisure Seeker"), Steve Coulter (last seen in "We Have a Ghost"), Michael Rose (last seen in "Ride Along 2"), Katelyn Farrugia, Edgar Zanabria (last seen in "The Suicide Squad"), Matt Mercurio (last seen in "Lady and the Tramp"), Dwayne Boyd (last seen in "Allegiant"), Scott Parks, Jermaine Rivers (last seen in "Black Adam"), Garrick Parks, Odessa Rae (last seen in "Movie 43"), Cecil M. Henry, Viviana Chavez (last seen in "Baby Driver"), Edward Martin Jr., Stephanie Enderby, Shirley Martin,
RATING: 4 out of 10 mausoleum plaques
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