Dead Man’s Wire – Review. By Oscar Aitchison.
An intriguing true story ripe for screen adaptation is relegated to standard, overly familiar genre fare.
On February 8th 1977 real estate developer Tony Kiritses (Bill Skarsgård) takes real estate broker Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery) hostage by tying a shotgun to his neck with metal wire – any sudden movement and he’s mincemeat. This simple, unbelievable, premise sets us up for legendary director Gus Van Sant’s first feature film since 2018 Dead Man’s Wire. The wire of the title being the one false move vice that Tony Kiritses believes is apt punishment for cutthroat men who knowingly ruined his plan of buying land to develop a new shopping mall leaving him with nothing. While the director’s talent behind the camera is evident the film’s pulse is dangerously close to critical with that dreaded beep of a flatline always an imminent possibility.
Tony originally plans to kidnap the Meridian Mortgage Company’s CEO M.L Hall (Al Pacino half asleep) who’s off on holiday so he’s forced to take one of his sons, the unassuming Richard. The film’s pacing is constantly off and it’s hard to get any kind of grip on any of the various characters brought into play. Tony kidnaps Richard within the first five minutes and takes him across town to his booby trapped apartment in a sometimes farcically funny but mostly disengaging manner. The first third plays out like Looney Tunes meets Crimewatch and even Van Sant’s initially interesting technique of shooting stills like the real life news footage becomes janky.
Skarsgård, usually so reliable, is cartoonish here, his mid western moustache and local hero standing up to the fat cats attitude is tried and tested, not offering anything new to the hostage movie formula. His pot boiling anger never feels organic and the performance becomes one note and overly showy. Montgomery isn’t given much to do either, there are whiffs of his absent father affecting his psyche but he mostly has to sit there looking tired and sweaty doing as Tony says with the film never fully committed to studying their mental and emotional similarities despite the wild discrepancy of financial security.
Public confidence in the government after the Watergate scandal and the high level of unemployment and energy shortages all add surrounding context feeding Tony’s erratic frustration. The only problem being the themes the film so heavily leans on are so common in modern filmmaking that even a true story can feel exhaustingly overdone. The idea of the problematic hero gaining a morbid level of support is prevalent in the ongoing true crime explosion and the momentum struggles to keep rolling in Tony’s small, darkly lit apartment.
With a film so reminiscent of Dog Day Afternoon it’s strange Al Pacino was cast as the titular “bad guy”, though he’s barely on screen and his scenes lack the type of desperation and bite his former character Sonny Wortzik so effectively portrays. In fact, all supporting characters are laid on the wayside, especially Myha’la’s thankless young reporter Linda Page attempting to cover the story and move towards primetime news to absolutely zero larger point. The script from Austin Kolodney is ambitious in its weaving of characters and larger issues surrounding capitalism but it has perhaps come at the wrong time with so many films adopting this style and approach.
The media storm for an event like this is at least convincingly handled and Colmon Domingo’s Fred Temple, a local radio host Tony idolises adds an intriguing element to the hostage negotiations. But Domingo is not given the space to showcase his ability or embed the character into the wider picture of economic distress and a common voice that unites people like Tony. There are glimmers of action everywhere but the film simply never gets going – like a hulking shotgun, always threatening the gritty hailstorm but consistently jamming at the vital moments.
VERDICT: 4.5/10
Despite nice period detail and a stranger than fiction tale Dead Man’s Wire struggles to feel anything other than dead on arrival.
