This year’s Venice Film Festival World Premiered many worthwhile films, some truly wonderful, but I’ve been waiting for that one cinematic experience to just blow me away. And it has finally arrived with Gus Van Sant’s gripping, wholly engrossing, gut-punch thriller Dead Man’s Wire—reminiscent of the genius ‘70s works by Lumet, Altman & Scorsese as well as last year’s egregiously overlooked and underrated film September 5, directed by Tim Fehlbaum.
This remarkable true story (Van Sant says, “crafted with care”) proves that everything old is, indeed scarily, new again.
Set in Indianapolis, Indiana, the film opens on the morning of February 8, 1977, in an almost spoof-like manner of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver or Todd Phillips’s Joker. 44-year-old Anthony G. “Tony” Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård), enters the office building of the Meridian Mortgage Company, carrying a long cardboard container that looks quite obviously like it could be housing a shotgun. He sits and waits to see the head of the company, M.L. Hall (Al Pacino) as he seemingly has done before many times in the last four years.
Unbeknownst to him, M.L. is sunning himself in Florida. Instead, M.L.’s son, Richard O. Hall (Dacre Montgomery), the company president, greets Tony, who walks him to a large conference room where he thinks Tony is about to show him new plans for his shopping center. Instead, he opens the cardboard box and produces a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun attached with a “dead man’s wire” from the trigger to Hall’s head, no safety. Thus begins the bizarre and almost unbelievable (except it really happened) saga of Tony’s meticulously planned, steadfast and persistent demand for justice from the company he insists wronged him.
“I’m a mean motherfucker and I’m mad,” Tony exclaims, just in case Richard thinks he’s joking. Tony proceeds to call 911 to alert them to his hostage taking and, while the police surround him, walks Richard out the building, and into a cop car. He then drives to his home, with Richard, where he begins to announce his demands.
En route, Officer Michael Grable (Cary Elwes), a drinking buddy of Tony, tries to talk him down, to no avail.
Along the way, a priest stops him imploring him to stop, repent and wash himself of his sins. His hilarious reply, “Why don’t you wash my ass, Father!”
Tony’s wrathful and, arguably insane, act was due to the fact that he took out a loan to purchase 17 acres of land in order to build a shopping center. Meridian Mortgage, knowing the land-buy was a solid investment, set out to screw him by deterring potential tenants, and then went after Tony for the interest on his loan. Tired of being kicked around, Tony takes matters into his own hands, demanding immunity and a public apology.
The bonkers insanity of watching this sequence in 2025 is that Tony would never have been allowed to get into a police car today, but back then, before cases like this became numerous, the authorities had little experience dealing with this type of criminality.
Van Sant has been up front about how he began filming in November of 2024 and then, in December, the Giuseppe Mangione shooting took place, so he knew he was dealing with something “timely and uncomfortable.”
And Tony is someone who desperately takes matters into his own hands, like Mangione, and becomes a hero to many, so it is tricky business. At the press screening I attended, there was a burst of extended applause and some whoops and hollers, a big difference from the mild, polite clapping I’ve witnessed.
But it’s my assumption that most of that cheering was for the expertly crafted filmmaking on display.
I adore Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting and, especially, Milk, but this is Van Sant’s best work to date. He manages to take aspects of some of the best films of the 1970s– Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon & Network, Altman’s Nashville and Scorsese’s aforementioned Taxi Driver, use his own erratic cutting style (kudos to editor Saar Klein) as well as the use of black-and-white still frames occasionally stopping the action to the greatest effect. He also weaves in some real news footage from the time. And in the end creates the most intense, nail-biting, nerve-racking docu-thriller.
I was literally on the edge on my seat during most of the 105-minute running time—which is quite painful.
Austin Kolodney’s impressive script (his first to be produced into a feature) builds steadily in momentum and the dialogue sounds period perfect.
Van Sant’s use of ‘70s songs also works incredibly.
And he’s assembled a truly gifted and totally committed cast led by Bill Skarsgård, who is frighteningly effective as Tony.
It’s no secret that the Skarsgård clan are ridiculously talented from Bill’s Emmy-winning brother Alexander (Big Little Lies) to their amazing father Stellan, who word is may finally be up for an Oscar for his work in Sentimental Value—about time!
Bill has been terrific in Barbarian, Locked and Boy Kills World, but nothing on his resume to date prepared me for just how immersive and fearless he could be. It’s one of the best performances I’ve seen here in Venice (second only perhaps to Emma Stone’s extraordinary work in Bugonia).
Montgomery, who made his mark on Netflix’s Stranger Things, has been doing great work in indies recently (Went Up the Hill, What We Hide). Here he slowly reveals more about Richard. It oddly reminded me of John Cazale in Dog Day Afternoon–not that the characters have anything in common, but the peeling back layers as the narrative unfolds, do).
And speaking of Dog Day, it’s a nice homage to have Pacino in the small but potent part as the arrogant, hard-ass company owner who would rather save/keep face than save his son’s life.
Colman Domingo brings his brand of cool and elegant to the role of popular Indianapolis DJ Fred Temple, who Tony turns to when he needs an arbiter between himself and the authorities.
And Myha’la makes her mark as a free-lance TV journalist trying to make a splash and stumbling onto the story.
“What if his gun goes off?” asks someone at the TV station as the live press conference is being televised on all three networks—ingeniously interrupting an awards presentation to John Wayne.
The producer responds in matter-of-fact Paddy Chayefsky-fashion, “We’ll pay the fine and watch the ratings roll in.”
Dead Man’s Wire is so dense with social commentary that it almost demands a second viewing. And its timeliness cannot be overestimated since it grapples with the blurred lines when it comes to justice and a split society where many people sympathize with those who are taking the law into their own hands.
Was Tony Kiritsis insane? Is Giuseppe Mangione? Or are they victims of a system that always wants to fuck the little guy? Tony was certainly naive to believe he would ever get immunity. But the outcome of his lunatic actions is telling and proves we as a species seem to be destined to relive history repeatedly because we do not learn from the mistakes/injustices of the past.
