City Cinema: Dead Man’s Wire

Crime Drama. 14A, coarse language.
Dir: Gus Van Sant, US, 2025, 104 min.
Dacre Montgomery, Bill Skarsgård, Al Pacino, Cary Elwes.

“Bill Skarsgård leads this thoroughly gripping based-on-fact kidnap drama. He plays Tony Kiritsis, an Indianapolis businessman who, in 1977, snaps and abducts a mortgage broker, Richard Hall, after a business deal goes sour. Taking Hall to his apartment in full view of the police, he puts a ‘dead man’s wire’ around his captive’s neck, attached to a shotgun, that will trip if the cops try to intervene. From here, he tries to negotiate his demands, with TV news crews adding to the chaos. Director Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Milk) pays obvious tribute to fellow film-maker Sidney Lumet, notably bank robbery tale Dog Day Afternoon, especially with the casting of Al Pacino in a pleasing cameo as Hall’s unsympathetic father. There are potent turns, too, from Colman Domingo and Myha’la as, respectively, a local radio DJ and TV news reporter, although its hard to look past Skarsgård, quite sublime as Kiritsis, a man whose headline-grabbing fight against corporate bullies feels timely and resonant.” —James Mottram, Radio Times