Now this is a movie compromise! Way to go Gus Van Sant! Dead Man’s Wire takes a 2025 story and plants it in 1977. You know what this means? Movie nerds lose their minds, taking the greatest movie decade but applying today’s issues into the story like pseudo movie time travel. Throw in the movie star of the 70s, Pennywise and Billy from Stranger Things, and Dead Man’s Wire is not requisite viewing if you want to be a movie fanatic!
It’s 1977 in Indianapolis. Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgard) is ready to enact his plan. Pissed off at a money deal that real estate mogul M.L. Hall (Al Pacino) screwed him on. Tony asks to meet with him to discuss the fallout of what happened. Tony’s surprised to learn M.L. has left for vacation that day to Florida, leaving his son Richard (Dacre Montgomery) running the company while he’s out. Resolute, Tony continues his plan: he attached the titular Dead Man’s Wire to a shotgun he puts to Richard, taking him hostage back to his apartment. From there, Tony insists to Detective Grable (Cary Elwes) that he get money and an apology from M.L., and that he plead his case to Fred Temple (Colman Domingo), local Indy DJ whom Tony respects deeply.
Dead Man’s Wire is Gus Van Sant’s best movie in years. I really felt like I was watching a 1970’s film that was just discovered in some archives somewhere. Louisville stands in for Indianapolis perfectly: a generic looking small city that a guy like Tony could be stuck on the fringes of. Van Sant shoots Tony’s taking of Richard like he had just watched Dog Day Afternoon that morning, the pair going out into the street and through a car chase before holing up inside Tony’s apartment. The smartest thing Van Sant does though is show how everyone around Tony has selfish reasons to care about him. Myha’la comes in as a camerawoman, seeing this situation as her big break to get on a national broadcast. M.L. Hall treats the negotiation like any of his real estate ones, even though on the line is his son’s life. And the cops are so trigger happy that they smirk when an FBI agent shows up and tries to psychoanalyze Tony to be more tactical with him. Van Sant really makes you feel how the machine has Tony in over his head, destined to be swallowed up and forgotten by the uncaring machines of power already in place.
The cast really sells the 1977 of it all too. Bill Skarsgard felt like one of my dad’s friends in the best way possible. He’s really good playing a guy who got dealt one bad hand too many, making Tony flip a switch to do something like this. And yet, there’s a good person in there too, wounded, that Skarsgard makes you fully understand by the time Dead Man’s Wire reaches its conclusion. Dacre Montgomery plays the opposite of his Stranger Things character, a sweet family man in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m shocked the DJ’s I’ve listened to are not Colman Domingo’s Fred Temple, using that incredible voice of his. Filling out the rest of the cast are stars of the 70s and 80s for nice period piece symmetry: Cary Elwes as Tony’s friend/a police detective, Al Pacino and Kelly Lynch as a real estate midwest power couple, with Pacino playing the characters he was going after in his 70’s films, with glorious costume aplomb.
One thing we learn from Dead Man’s Wire is to not fully judge someone on their worst mistakes. So Bill Skarsgard, I forgive you for the Crow remake that should never have happened. Dacre Montgomery, I’m sorry they had no idea how to write Billy on Stranger Things so they had to kill you off. And most importantly, I forgive you Gus Van Sant for Pyscho….wait, no, I can’t forgive that one. What a hubris laden catastrophe that was.