Rent Dead Man's Wire (2025)

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.

Authentic but Predictable 1977-set Stand-off Drama, also now a new TV drama series - Dead Man's Wire review by PV

I must admit I watched this while also reading - it's that kind of movie. Very predictable, and true to the 1977 look, for anyone who loved TV series like Starsky and Hutch when a kid as I did! The smoking, the colours (orange and brown!), the basic technology - all bang-on 1970s.

Watch to the end to find out what happened in text on-screen AND footage of the actual siege in 1977.

I just found it predictable, ho-hum, so award it 2.5 stars rounded down. NOTHING wrong with it, as such. It's just unexciting for me, like background music or noise, hence my reading whilst watching, which was fine - I missed nothing! Others may like it more.

I read recently that MGM+ have a TV drama series called AMERICAN HOSTAGE about the exact same real-life story, which compares it to 1975 Al Pacino film DOG DAY AFTERNOON which this is like too HENCE the casting of Al P here. Neat! No idea why studios do this, copying each other (as with A BUG'S LIFE and ANTZ out in the same year in mid 1990s.) They must spy on each other, I suppose.