Dead Man's Wire

Watched at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.

Gus Van Sant has always been a fascinating director as his works on Elephant, Good Will Hunting, Gerry, To Die For, Last Days, and Paranoid Park are some of my favorite indie art-house movies ever. Since his last movie in seven years, Van Sant brings a slick, tense and comedic tale about the kidnapping and crime moment by Tony Kiritsis and the tension surrounding the event.

Throughout, the production designs, Van Sant's direction and the atmosphere is strong. It helps build a sense of it's time period and the characters that are situated in this tense moment. What Van Sant succeeds is grasping the characters motives, understand their personalities and see through them as human. Paralleling themes about the corrupted and flawed system behind the mortgage and money business, and the conflicts it creates. The writing, while it is pretty straight-forward and predictable, is solid as some of the themes and concepts explored are interesting.

All of the performances are pretty good. Bill Skarsard is absolutely fantastic, alongside with the rest of the cast members. I do wish some of the pacing in the second act and certain dialogue moments could improve as some of the moments did feel a bit overlong or strangely paced at times. But overall, it's nice to see Van Sant still got it with his talents.

Any experienced screenwriter offered a chance to write this story - about a mentally ill guy who takes a mortgage broker hostage - would immediately ask himself, "Who's the hero? From whose POV do I tell the story?" The writer here decided to tell the story from the deranged kidnapper's POV. A fatal mistake. We have no way in. No rooting interest. A heartless enterprise. Barren and amoral. An impeccably made bore.

Al Pacino receives top billing in this true-life story, though he's probably in the film no more than five or ten minutes. So, if you're watching it for him, you'll likely feel hoodwinked!

The story is about a real person, Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård). In 1977, Kiritsis entered mortgage company office...taking the president hostage and rigging him up with a 'dead man's wire'...a harness of sorts attached to a shotgun aimed at the president! In other words, if police tried to stop Kiritsis, the gun would go off. Why did he do this desperate act? Well, he felt like the company had ruined him financially...stealing his idea for a shopping mall. What happened after? See the film.

The acting is generally very good (though Pacino does seem to ham it up a bit) and the story is interesting. However, it's also a film you could either watch or just read the Wikipedia article about Kiritsis. Now I am not saying it's a bad film in any way...it's very good. But the story is simple and if you just want to know how it all works out, read the article.

At a time when many of us may feel like we're being systematically shafted by big business and powerful financial institutions, it's natural that some of us might feel justified in seeking retribution against them for their deceitful actions. Such was also the case in February 1977, when an aggrieved borrower sought potentially deadly vengeance against the president of an Indianapolis mortgage company, as seen in this fact-based comedy-drama-thriller from director Gus Van Sant. When Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård), a mentally challenged borrower, felt financially betrayed by a lender he implicitly trusted, he decided to take action to get back at the loan company's owner, M. L. Hall (Al Pacino). However, on the day he was scheduled to meet with Mr. Hall, Kiritsis learned that he was on a last-minute midwinter "business trip" to Florida, thereby thwarting his plans for revenge. So, with his principal intention thus foiled, the angry customer resorted to his fallback plan, taking the owner's son, Richard (Dacre Montgomery), as hostage. And, to show the world he meant business, the perpetrator fitted his captive with a taut wire around his neck that was connected to a shotgun set to fire with the slightest unplanned motion. However, despite his seemingly efficient planning, the determined but somewhat bumbling culprit ended up launching what would turn out to be a cross between a heinous criminal event and a comical media circus that mesmerized the city for days. Law enforcement officials, like Kiritsis's acquaintance, Det. Michael Grable (Cary Elwes), were frustrated by developments at nearly every turn, while many in the public at large sympathized with the captor's seemingly justifiable motives. And, in the process, the event exploded to draw in a variety of ancillary storylines, such as the determined campaign of a neophyte television reporter (Myha'la) aggressively seeking to lock down coverage of her first breakthrough story and the improvised negotiation efforts of a popular local radio host (Colman Domingo) who was trusted by the event's ringmaster who was unwittingly drawn into the fray. The result is an accurate re-enactment of a potentially dangerous event that ultimately plays out like a classic example of pure Americana kitsch, a film that calls to mind elements found in such releases as "Dog Day Afternoon" (1975) and "Breaking" (2022). However, despite the picture's commendable efforts at re-creating a scenario that has largely slipped from public memory over the years, this release feels as though it tries a little too hard at times, as if it's wearing its penchant for period piece authenticity on its sleeve. In addition, portions of the narrative drag somewhat in the middle, coming across like padding to fill out the easily trimmed 1:45:00 runtime. Those criticisms aside, however, "Dead Man's Wire" nevertheless features an excellent production design, along with fine performances by Domingo, Pacino, and, especially, Skarsgård. This modestly entertaining offering generally holds viewer interest reasonably well, providing a modicum of gripping drama and more than a few well-earned chuckles along the way. If nothing else, however, the story should serve as a warning to those who would try to pull one over on an increasingly unsettled, unpredictable, trigger-happy public, one whose imbedded lesson strongly cautions that cost of calculated financial scheming could easily overshadow whatever profits might come from such artful material deception.

We saw a preview screening of Dead Man's Wire through Film Independent, followed by a powerful discussion with director Gus Van Sant and producer Cassian Elwes.

Based on the 1977 Tony Kiritsis hostage case, Dead Man's Wire retells a shocking real event: a man pushed to desperation by a mortgage company wires a shotgun to his mortgage broker and takes him hostage. Van Sant's direction transforms what could have been a cliched and formulaic true-crime story into an unflinching exploration of class, despair, and human empathy.

Bill Skarsgård delivers a career-defining performance as Tony Kiritsis. He grounds the role in vulnerability and wounded pride rather than pure rage. Dacre Montgomery, as Richard Hall, the hostage and reluctant villain, balances fear with surprising tenderness. Al Pacino, as Hall's father, looms like a cold shadow whose presence makes the film's flashes of humanity shine even brighter.

Colman Domingo's portrayal of the radio host is magnetic, his voice functions as conscience and chorus. From the studio booth he narrates, questions, and humanizes what the nation watches. His on-air calm becomes the film's moral center.

Visually, the film is a study in contrast. Van Sant and cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt use incredibly crisp and detailed images that could only be generated with modern technology, such as a burning cigarette or the close-up of someone's facial emotions, contrasted with stills reminiscent of grainy 70's newspaper B&W photography and the scanlines from the eras early color video cameras. The juxtaposition creates a layered visual tapestry that collapses documentary immediacy and archival memory into a single, haunting rhythm.

Danny Elfman's score weaves with period tracks from Gil Scott-Heron and Yes to give the film its emotional scaffolding. Sound design is precise: the crackle of a live microphone, the hollow echo of an empty office, the ominous small clicks of the device that gives the film its title. These elements turn aural texture into visceral tension.

The film also gestures at a broader pattern of public anger and institutional failure that come from the headlines of today. An examination of the moral complexity that helps the movie avoid cheap sensationalism. Instead it asks a sharper question: what happens when people are failed by legal, financial, and other systems?

Dead Man's Wire is timely. Foreclosures and financial desperation, corporate coldness and lack of compassion are not relics of the 1970s. Van Sant's film insists on empathy as an active response. It does not excuse violence. It insists on understanding the humananity behind it.

Beautifully acted, technically exacting, and emotionally resonant. A haunting meditation on dignity, rage, and the fragile threads that bind us. Highly recommended.