In Dead Man’s Wire, a very angry individual takes a bank manager hostage and hooks him up to a shotgun-on-a-wire. Based on a true story and directed by Gus Van Sant, the movie is a well done if somewhat tedious crime-thriller.
The movie, set in 1977, has Bill Skarsgaard playing Tony Kiritsis, an agitated man who was screwed over a mortgage company. One day he takes Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery) hostage to make a statement and get his demands met.
Dead Man’s Wire basically is 100 minutes of Tony yelling and ranting and saying increasingly bonkers things. In other words: it’s not really how I want to spend 100 minutes of my time. I could drive into downtown Seattle and get the same experience while also getting some “fresh” air.
Skarsgaard is good, I guess, but the role itself doesn’t feel all that challenging; if we were meant to really sympathize with Tony, however, then both Skarsgaard and Van Sant failed miserably in that regard. Tony is an unlikable guy doing unsavory things to make a point. On the other end of the gun, Montgomery is likable but one-dimensional; he, too, is not a source of much sympathy.
The only thing Dead Man’s Wire has going for it is that you don’t know how it will end, which you won’t unless you for some reason know about this obscure hostage situation from 50 years ago (I was born in the 1980s and am not even convinced the 1970s existed in reality). Once you do learn how it ends, the only remaining question will be: why did Gus Van Sant feel so drawn to this who-cares story to make a movie out of it?
Dead Man’s Wire isn’t a bad movie, but it’s also sort of a nothingburger. It’s a movie without a purpose. While I’ll never be able to get as angry as Tony Kiritsis, I’m sort of angry I spent 100 minutes on this forgettable crime-thriller.
Review by Erik Samdahl. Erik is a marketing and technology executive by day, avid movie lover by night. He is a member of the Seattle Film Critics Society.