Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | September 8, 2025
It’s a cold February day in Indianapolis in 1977. A man named Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgard) walks into a mortgage provider’s office with a long box in his hand and demands to see the manager. He’s out of town, so the manager’s son, Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery), takes over for what is supposed to be a routine meeting. Then Tony pulls out a shotgun with a round of wire attached to the barrel. He ties it around Richard’s neck like a noose and takes him hostage. So begins a legendary standoff.
Based on a true story, Gus Van Sant’s latest thriller is working with some fascinating material. Kiritsis was a real man who, having felt ripped off following a land deal that didn’t pan out as desired, became headline news across the nation as he dragged Richard Hall through the streets with a killer device binding them together. Some called him a folk hero looking out for the little man. In Van Sant’s version, there’s no room for such pathos or sentimentality.
Van Sant is one of America’s most malleable directors. He moves so fluidly between niche indies, mainstream prestige, and off-the-wall oddities without missing a beat. Who else could make My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting and the remake of Psycho in the space of a decade? Dead Man’s Wire sees him on more commercial ground, keeping things pretty straightforward and bringing in a lot of humour to this Midwest panic. Tony is twitchy and cruel, but eager to play the role of a good host to his victim. His plan is almost quaintly homemade, like a Home Alone contraption with even more murderous intentions. It’s an operation reliant on getting as much attention as possible, but Tony doesn’t seem prepared for what this strain of stardom will make of him.
The lion’s share of action is focused on this odd couple of kidnapper and captor but Van Sant casts a wide net of spectators and suspects in Tony’s rambled plans. Chief among them is Fred Heckman, a suave local DJ played by Colman Domingo whom Tony uses as his media conduit. An unrecognizable Cary Elwes plays an FBI agent trying to get this issue solved as neatly as possible. Al Pacino has a scene-stealing supporting role as the Southern gentleman father of Richard, who refuses to give in to Tony’s demands. He is shockingly callous about the possibility of his son dying because, hey, it’s business.
It’s all fascinatingly ambivalent in its morals. Maybe some will read it as endorsing a madman’s plea, but it’s presented too mundanely for that. Sometimes, you feel pathos for the working-class man dealing with bureaucratic cruelty, but then you watch him peacock for the media and wonder where his priorities lie. The film smartly doesn’t paint Hall as a smarmy rich boy or someone to root against. Dacre Montgomery mines a lot of emotions out of his hunched posture and desperation to stay stoic in the face of his potential murder. There’s surely another version of this script somewhere that’s more focused on Hall’s emotional struggle and the lifetime of mental health issues that followed this experience. Instead, we’re focused on Tony, a paranoid weirdo who everyone seems unsurprised to learn has completely snapped. Skarsgard is no stranger to a horror movie villain, but Tony is more a paranoid pathetic than cackling mastermind. Frankly, he’s exhausting to be around and Skarsgard is dialed up to 11 for the entire thing. He’s hard to like, but he makes for good TV.
There are hints of a wider theme on the reality TV-fication of our times and how the 24-hour news cycle would shake our society’s foundations but Van Sant leaves a deeper analysis to other films. TV reporters scuttle around the apartment building where the pair are, drinking free coffee and looking for good angles. Some of the retro-style footage shown feels like it could have been ripped straight from the real thing almost 50 years ago. It allows Van Sant to let out his inner Dog Day Afternoon with some grimy ’70s stylings, all camera zooms and jazzy beats. He wants something leaner and meaner, which makes for a very enjoyable watch, although one that cannot help but feel a tad slight. The victim became the afterthought in his own story, and the movie doesn’t seem to know how to confront that because it’s so focused on Tony.
Still, for such a fun film, there is a refreshing cynicism to
Dead Man’s Wre had its North American premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. It currently does not have a wide release.
