Dead Man's Wire (2025)
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- On February 8, 1977, Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård) entered the office of Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery), president of the Meridian Mortgage Company, and took him hostage with a sawed-off shotgun wired with a "dead man's wire" from the trigger to Tony's own neck.
- Actors:
- Bill Skarsgård, Cary Elwes, Dacre Montgomery, Al Pacino, Colman Domingo, Myha'la Herrold, Jordan Claire Robbins, John Robinson, Kyle Rankin, Katie Kinman, Mark Helms, Vinh Nguyen, Stephanie Bertoni, Daniel R. Hill, Andy S. Allen, Todd Gable, Danielle Munday, Neil Mulac, Casey Feigh, John N. Dixon
- Directors:
- Gus Van Sant
- Producers:
- Noor Alfallah, Remi Alfallah, Mark Amin, Lorenzo Antonucci, Rishi Bajaj, Clark Baker, Lance Barnard, Richard Barner, Robert Ogden Barnum, Ryan Bartecki, Eleanor Bingham Miller
- Writers:
- Austin Kolodney
- Aka:
- Провод мертвеца
- Genres:
- Drama
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Reviews (1) of Dead Man's Wire
A Shotgun, a Grudge, and a Very Good Time - Dead Man's Wire review by griggs
I wasn’t expecting Gus Van Sant to make a hostage thriller this fun, but here we are. Dead Man’s Wire follows a man choking on debt who straps a shotgun to his hostage and turns a public breakdown into one last bid for control. It’s blackly funny and properly queasy, sitting somewhere between Dog Day Afternoon and Network. The wintry Indianapolis setting and drab, no-fuss style sell the period without tipping into retro cosplay.
Bill Skarsgård is excellent: bulging eyes, brittle fury, full-body self-pity. Colman Domingo more than holds his own as the cool-headed radio DJ drawn into the circus. Al Pacino turns up in full late-career ham mode and, honestly, fair play to him.
Van Sant handles the shifts between menace, absurdity and satire with a surprisingly light touch. It occasionally spends so long inside this aggrieved male tantrum that it risks getting a bit too sympathetic. Still, it’s bleak, surreal and funny in exactly the wrong way. The use of “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” near the tipping point is a sly Butch Cassidy callback that makes the bad taste linger. More pointed than just another odd little true-crime yarn.