Apprentice (2016) Review: Learning the Hangman's Trade

Is Apprentice worth watching?

Yes, with some reservations. Apprentice is a precise, quietly chilling drama about the people who carry out executions, and it treats capital punishment with a seriousness that avoids both sermon and sensation. Boo Junfeng builds tension from routine and procedure, and Wan Hanafi Su is magnetic as the veteran hangman at its centre. The reservation is its emotional reserve: the young protagonist remains so closed off that the film can feel more admirable than affecting, and its final stretch leaves some threads deliberately loose.

What is Apprentice about?

Aiman (Fir Rahman) is an ambitious young correctional officer who is transferred to the country’s highest-security prison, where death-row inmates are held. There he catches the attention of Rahim (Wan Hanafi Su), the prison’s long-serving chief executioner, who is looking for someone to learn the job. Aiman seems eager to become his apprentice, but his interest is not only professional. It is bound up with a family history he keeps hidden, even from his older sister, Suhaila (Mastura Ahmad), who has raised him and wants a different life for them both.

Apprentice is written and directed by Boo Junfeng, his second feature. It is set in Singapore, mostly in Malay with some English, made as an international co-production with German backing, and runs a lean 96 minutes. It premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in 2016 and won Best New Director at the Malaysia International Film Festival awards the following year.

The mechanics of an execution

The film’s most distinctive quality is its attention to process. Boo shows how an execution is prepared: the measurements, the rope, the timing, the weight calculations, the rehearsals with sandbags. Rahim teaches these details with the pride of a craftsman, and the film lets the audience feel the unsettling calm of a job done carefully and well. The horror comes from the ordinariness.

The prison is filmed in cold, clean compositions, with long corridors and pale institutional light, and the sound design keeps the silence of the place pressing in. The camera is patient and observant, never lingering for shock, and that restraint makes the moments of real tension, when an execution is being prepared, grip hard.

A mentor more vivid than his pupil

Wan Hanafi Su, a veteran of Malaysian film and stage, gives Rahim a gruff warmth and a steady, unapologetic view of his work. He sees himself as providing a dignified service, and the film takes that view seriously enough to make it genuinely unsettling. He is the most vivid presence on screen.

Fir Rahman has the harder task, playing a young man whose motives are opaque even to those closest to him. His stillness suits the character’s secrecy, and in the scenes with Mastura Ahmad’s sister, a warmer and more grounded figure, glimpses of Aiman’s inner turmoil do break through. Mostly, though, he remains hard to read, which is part of the design and also its limitation.

Where the restraint becomes distance

Because the film keeps its protagonist at arm’s length, the drama sometimes feels theoretical rather than personal. Aiman’s family history is revealed in careful fragments, and the emotional payoff is muted. The final act raises questions about complicity and choice without fully developing them, and some viewers will find the ending more abrupt than resonant. The supporting characters within the prison, meanwhile, are sketched rather than fully drawn.

Who should watch Apprentice?

It is for viewers interested in serious, socially engaged drama, in Southeast Asian cinema, and in debates about the death penalty. It is quiet, slow-burning and short, well suited to a focused evening. It deals with executions and their preparation in detail, and has some emotionally distressing scenes, though little graphic violence; it is best for adults and older teenagers.

For films that ask similar questions:

• There Is No Evil, Mohammad Rasoulof’s powerful Iranian portrait of ordinary people required to carry out executions.
• The Lives of Others, another study of a state functionary whose work forces a moral reckoning.

The verdict

Apprentice is a disciplined, thought-provoking drama that makes the machinery of capital punishment feel frighteningly human. Its protagonist’s opacity and its muted ending keep it from full emotional impact, but Wan Hanafi Su’s performance and Boo Junfeng’s control make it a film worth seeking out.

Rating: 3.5/5