PLOT: The true story of Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård), a put-upon local businessman who, in 1977, took his mortgage broker, Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery), hostage, infamously wiring the muzzle of his sawed-off shotgun to the back of Hall’s head.
REVIEW: It’s been way too long since Gus Van Sant was behind the camera for a feature film. Indeed, it’s been seven whole years since his last movie, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, hit theaters. While he’s been keeping himself busy directing TV, Van Sant is still a pioneer of American independent cinema, and Dead Man’s Wire, while not among his very best work, is a compelling film that proves he hasn’t lost his touch.
It’s based on a pretty infamous true story, and one that should resonate for a lot of viewers in our financially uncertain times, where the common person has a lot of rage against the powers-that-be. Yet, Van Sant, along with writer Austin Kolodney, knows he’s not making a simplistic fantasy, opting instead to tell a nuanced story that’s been compelling enough over the years that there’s actually a limited series in the works that tells the same story.
Bill Skarsgård, in a bravura performance, plays Tony Kiritsis, a businessman in Indianapolis who thinks he’s found his ticket to the big time by leasing a piece of real estate that he thinks could become valuable. Yet, he’s not financially secure enough to make his payments, and as such falls behind and is foreclosed on. He believes that the mortgage brokers he owes the money to simply want the land for themselves, so he takes one of them, Dacre Montgomery’s Richard Hall, hostage, demanding he be made whole financially.
There’s probably a version of this movie that could have been made where Skarsgård’s Kiritsis is some kind of regular Joe hero, or at least sympathetic, but Van Sant has made something more honest. While not a monster, Kiritsis is a scary guy, with Skarsgård playing him as an unbearably entitled, potentially dangerous sociopath. It’s not enough for him to take Hall hostage; he has to repeatedly humiliate and emasculate him by using the wire to attach him to his shotgun, guiding him around like a dog on a leash. By contrast, it’s Dacre Montgomery’s Richard Hall who gains much of our sympathy, with him really just a middleman for his rich father, as played by Al Pacino, who seems far more likely to surrender his son’s life than ever take a bath on a deal gone bad.
A lot of the film centers on how Kiritsis and Hall interact when alone in the former’s apartment, as the police try to work out this escalating hostage situation. As played by Skarsgård, Kiritsis’ mood fluctuates wildly, with him occasionally kind and sympathetic to Hall before flying off into sanctimonious rages. Montgomery, who everyone will remember as Billy from Stranger Things, vanishes into the part, with a slightly shaved-back hairline and a generally low-key manner that makes him believable and highly sympathetic as a kind of everyman who, while privileged on one hand, is always at the mercy of someone more powerful on the other.
Yet, it’s not just a two-hander, with Van Sant spending a lot of time with a disc jockey, Colman Domingo’s Fred Temple, who is the only one Kiritsis will communicate with and who does his best to de-escalate a situation he knows could spiral out of hand. Domingo has the right cool, soothing presence to play a guy who, despite being unqualified for the job, proves to be a natural at de-escalating things, while an unrecognizable Cary Elwes plays a cop trying to end the siege without anyone getting killed. Given Van Sant’s reputation, the cast is stacked with talent. While Pacino’s role is small, he owns the screen in his scant moments, flourishing under a master like Van Sant, while rising star Myha’la also fares well as a not wholly sympathetic cub reporter who, after being first on the scene, realizes this is her ticket to the big time.
While taut, Van Sant keeps the pace propulsive, making this one of the few awards-caliber movies this year to run under two hours, with a well-edited 105-minute runtime. He also does a good job evoking 1977 Indianapolis, with costuming that feels authentic rather than cartoony, while opting for more unique musical deep cuts, such as Eumir Deodato’s disco redux of Also sprach Zarathustra and Harpers Bizarre’s cover of Witchi Tai To.
While Dead Man’s Wire hasn’t really been part of the Oscar conversation this year, and truthfully isn’t an awards movie per se, it’s still an involving thriller and terrifically entertaining. It’s the kind of indie movie we were spoiled with in the nineties but that has become increasingly rare nowadays, especially on the big screen. It comes from Row K Entertainment, who are working on bringing mid-level movies like this to theaters, and I hope it turns a profit for them, as it’s the kind of movie that really feels like a treat—especially in a dead month like January.
