Final Rating: 4/5
Dead Man’s Wire, the latest film from director Gus Van Sant, tells the true story of a desperate man’s violent kidnapping in 1977. Van Sant emphasizes period-accuracy, with the film often looking like a relic from the 70s. But despite dramatizing an event from almost 50 years ago, Van Sant’s depicts a crusade against a system that’s surprisingly modern.
After falling behind on the mortgage of his commercial property, Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgard) storms into Meridian Mortgage, demanding to speak to M.L. Hall (Al Pacino). After learning that M.L. is on vacation, Kiritsis goes after his son, Richard (Dacre Montgomery), tying a wire connected to a shotgun around Hall’s neck such that the weapon will discharge if Hall moves too far from Kiritsis. A dead man’s wire, if you will.
From there, Kiritsis brings his hostage back to home and locks himself inside while the police negotiate for Hall’s release. Not long after the initial kidnapping, the police additionally rope in Fred Temple (Colman Domingo), a local DJ and host of Kiritsis’ favourite call-in radio show, and the only person Kiritsis is interested in talking to.
In Wire, Van Sant has empathy for each character, but it’s Kiritsis’ depiction which is the most sympathetic. As Kiritsis gets more of his demands met, it never feels like the “good guys” are capitulating to the “bad guys.” Rather, it’s as if Kiritsis is finally getting his due. Like the world is paying him back at last. When the police or Hall try a new trick to escape, it’s as if they are betraying his trust, rather than outsmarting him.
Kiritsis is a man on the wrong side of money, repeatedly screwed over by banks and brokers, and Skarsgard’s performance feels plucked out of 2025. He plays Kiritsis as intensely angry, but deliberate in his actions and delivery, never paranoid or erratic. At no point does he seem like a serious threat to anyone except his singular victim.
Kiritsis’ rage is framed as a consequence of living in such a pointedly antagonistic world. While his expression of that rage is extreme, it’s played more like a desperate man resorting to desperate measures than an insane person snapping and turning violent. As Temple fields calls from radio listeners, a large portion of his audience voices support for Kiritsis, expressing their own frustrations with loan sharks and bankers, couched in disclaimers of “I don’t support kidnapping, but…”
The police and media primarily focus on Kiritsis’ demand of five million dollars, but the money is secondary to Kiritsis. Given a platform to speak, Kiritsis’ makes clear that his true aim is a sincere apology from M.L. Hall. Despite everything, Kiritsis’ primary goal is to appeal to the humanity of people who have never shown him evidence of any.
Opposite Skarsgard is Montgomery, playing Richard Hall as scared, emotional, but ultimately detached. Hall is going through the worst period of his life and must reckon with people treating him as nothing more than a bargaining chip with a person they don’t even respect.
Hall is, explicitly, the victim of a federal crime, but implicitly, he’s a victim of the world not unlike Kiritsis. Once kidnapped, Hall practically ceases to be a person in the eyes of the world. The police only care about his safety because he is a hostage. The callers on Temple’s show hardly even acknowledge him, instead focusing all their comments on debating whether Kiritsis’ actions are wrong.
Hall’s most sincere moment is when he talks about growing up as the son of a cold money-man. As Hall discusses his father’s neglect, Montgomery intentionally holds back from drawing on a deep well of emotion. This stunted moment shows Hall’s dehumanization as something ingrained into his character. Even to the most important people in his life, he’s a title before he’s a person.
Hall’s character arc is tragic, starting the movie as a charismatic, if vapid, capitalist, and ending the film hardened. It’s a negative character arc that Van Sant depicts as something of an inevitability.
If Kiritsis’ main goal is to appeal to the humanity of people he sees as monsters, then the ultimate tragedy is that the means he chooses to do so necessarily turn him into a monster. No one could blame Hall for refusing to open up to his attacker, but his time as a hostage is also the most time he’ll ever spend with someone he himself has victimized through his business. The only common ground between the two is the harm they can inflict on each other, and if they can only engage through cutting each other down, there’s not much hope for either to grow.
Van Sant’s style leans on techniques from documentary filmmaking to achieve a period-accurate aesthetic. By covering the story from multiple angles while working in archival footage and footage made to look archival, Wire achieves a level of authoritativeness. While it never transcends dramatization, Wire is level-headed enough to occasionally be mistaken for being objective. Yet, Van Sant seems more squarely in Kiritsis’ corner than anyone else’s.
It’s in that sympathy for the devil that Wire is at its most modern. Though Wire is based on events from 50 years ago, it’s as if it was inspired by crimes from just last year. On December 4, 2024, Luigi Mangione shot and killed the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, allegedly motivated by a view of the CEO and insurance providers at large as “parasites,” as well as frustrations stemming from his family’s struggles with health insurance. While Mangione was swiftly arrested and indicted on 4 federal and 11 state charges, public reaction to the crime included a surprising amount of support for Mangione. It’s hard to see that news story and not think of Kiritsis being declared “not guilty” of kidnapping due to insanity.
Dead Man’s Wire is a story about public frustration with exploitative corporations boiling over and manifesting as action. While Kiritsis’ actions may have been unique, his anger wasn’t and isn’t.
Dead Man’s Wire was seen during the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.
