Anti-heroes make for compelling subjects, particularly in a world as unjust as the one we live in, and 1970s American cinema has absolutely no shortage of them. Gus Van Sant’s Dead Man’s Wire revisits the era by dramatising an infamous 1977 hostage stand-off staged by Tony Kiritsis, who rigged mortgage broker Richard Hall – who he believed was responsible for his property foreclosure – to a shotgun in a desperate plea for “justice”. It’s a story of righteous anger curdling into empty spectacle; one that ought to crackle with danger and relevance, given the rapturous reception that Luigi Mangione received after shooting a pharmaceutical executive on the streets of New York. Despite the pedigree of its cast and the weight of its true-crime source material, the film lands as curiously muted, a handsome but overly familiar retread of hostage-thriller beats we’ve seen many times before.
The most compelling reason to watch is Bill Skarsgård, who commits fully to Kiritsis’s volatility while being charming enough to justify the support that Kiritis garnered during the 63-hour stand-off. He’s sweaty, wild-eyed, and unpredictable, shifting from raging monologues to disarming vulnerability in a single breath. This is a man whose anger is righteous, but you never doubt the shotgun is loaded and he will deliver on his threat to blow Hall’s head off. It’s a performance of true commitment and conviction, but is working harder than the film around him. Opposite him, Dacre Montgomery is effective and heartbreaking as the hapless banker raised by a truly hellish patriarch, who spends days with a shotgun rigged to a wire around his neck, though his role is mostly reactive – a vulnerable vessel for Skarsgård’s fury.
Van Sant directs with a steadiness that occasionally borders on pastiche. He resists sensationalism, which is no small feat given the bombastic source material. The hostage sequences are gruellingly tense, but the film never quite finds a rhythm beyond escalation, monologue, negotiation, repeat. For a story and subject this strange, the filmmaking flourishes are conservative.
What does buoy proceedings is the wider ensemble. Colman Domingo, whose inclusion is always a balm for the soul, injects warmth as a disc jockey caught up and colluding in the spectacle, but Al Pacino’s involvement is more distracting than anything else. His very presence recalls Dog Day Afternoon, the genre’s gold standard, and every time he appears you can’t help wishing you were watching Sidney Lumet’s propulsive classic instead. Van Sant seems aware of the echo but does nothing to address it, leaving the comparison hanging uncomfortably in the air. Visually, while not defying conventions, the film is handsome and Arnaud Potier’s cinematography captures the clammy claustrophobia of rooms where death feels seconds away, while Danny Elfman’s score provides a thrum of menace. But these flourishes can’t disguise how ordinary the structure feels. For all its talk of desperation, systemic failure, and prejudice, the film never digs into the broader political context with enough bite.
There are fleeting glimpses of Van Sant’s more poetic instincts, sweaty close-ups that linger just past comfort, tense silences that could be cut by a knife, and a subtle but moving performance from Myha’la as a journalist using this crisis as an opportunity to prove her mettle. But despite this many bright spots in the end, Dead Man’s Wire hasn’t illuminated Kiritsis so much as re-enacted them. As a result, Dead Man’s Wire is eminently watchable but struggles to justify its existence beyond the surface. In revisiting a story once electrifying and bizarre, Van Sant has erected a compelling monument to a fascinating tale, but one that is haunted by the ghosts of better films.
