Dead Man’s Wire
Directed by Gus Van Sant
Written by Austin Kolodney
Starring Bill Skarsgard, Colman Domingo and Al Pacino
Classification N/A; 105 minutes
Opens in select theatres Jan. 16
On Feb. 8, 1977, 44-year-old Tony Kiritsis left the Meridian Mortgage Company office in Indianapolis with a hostage in tow: his mortgage broker, Richard O. Hall, wearing, to the disbelief of passersby, a bizarre collar around his neck. Central to Kiritsis’s kidnapping scheme was this homespun “dead man’s line,” where the muzzle of a short-barrelled shotgun was wired to the back of Hall’s head, with connecting wires wrapped around the trigger and Kiritsis’s neck.
If Hall attempted to run, or the police shot Kiritsis, the gun would go off, killing the hostage instantly. Kiritsis, who felt wronged by Meridian Mortgage after missing his payments, held his hostage for 63 hours, during which time police almost comically acquiesced to the kidnapper’s wishes, making him a symbol of institutional defiance until his inevitable capture and arrest.
The latest film by American director Gus Van Sant, Dead Man’s Wire (“wire” because Dead Man’s Line is the 2018 documentary that served as the foundation for this thriller) takes up the incident with its absurdity intact. The film’s Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgard) arrives on screen, twitchy and tetchy, with a suspiciously oblong box under his arm that conceals the line-wire used to capture “Dick” Hall (Dacre Montgomery).
The film shifts its tone like an evasive minnow, at once circling the familiar visual grammar of true crime media and the slapstick fancies of a buddy comedy. After Tony embarks on his very public abduction – eagerly calling upon local bigwigs such as detective Michael Grable (Cary Elwes) and radio DJ Fred Temple (Colman Domingo) to substantiate his threat – he commandeers a cop car to drag Dick back to his explosive-lined apartment, where the mortgage broker spends two days handcuffed in a bathtub.
Dacre Montgomery as hostage Dick Hall, left, and Bill Skarsgard as captor Tony Kiritsis in Dead Man’s Wire, directed by Gus Vant Sant.Mongrel Media
The ensuing media frenzy is personified by Linda Page (Myha’la), a burgeoning news reporter itching for a good story. Footage of her reports are intercut throughout, delivering seemingly “live” exposition from Tony’s apartment courtyard, where a crowd of wide-eyed bystanders awaits the thud of a gunshot or a fireworks show of jerry-rigged bombs. Tony, riveted by the theatricality his crime conjured, wants “some goddamn catharsis, some genuine guilt.”
Such images of fast-talking American desperation – Kiritsis is “like Scorsese on a cocaine bender” as per Van Sant – have populated the thriller genre since its inception, notably in films such as the Al Pacino-starring Dog Day Afternoon. Dead Man’s Wire also arrives on the heels of the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, which might render Kiritsis a fitting “eat-the-rich” vigilante type of today. In real life, Kiritsis’s ire was fuelled by being, in his view, cheated out of the 17-acre property he had purchased to develop a shopping centre – a deal that would have made him exceedingly rich. “My businesses are my children,” Tony says at one point.
Al Pacino plays M.L. Hall.Stefania Rosini/Mongrel Media
A notable departure from the real-life event is the (presumably Dog Day-inspired) addition of M.L. Hall (Pacino, playing accent roulette), father of Dick and head honcho of Meridian Mortgage, from whom Tony demands a formal apology – though the magnate is conveniently only shown on the phone, sunbathing in Florida with little regard for the men on either end of the gun. Pacino’s throaty contrariety only makes us sympathetic to Dick, who is altogether kind, patient and stoic in the face (or occiput) of danger.
Skarsgard and Montgomery – both of whom are a decade younger than Kiritsis and Hall were at the time of the crime – are, through no fault of their own, too neat, too affable, too boyish for the roles. The pair are totally synergistic, playing off of each other with equal parts manic derangement and cool dread, almost romantic in their shared torment (“You have that Stockholm syndrome setting in already?” taunts M.L. over the phone). But the intensity of the situation and Tony’s capacity to pull the trigger are unconvincing; Skarsgard’s looks are the only thing that can kill.
Indeed, Van Sant, a pillar in the independent queer new wave of the 1990s, can still jot a clean line between restlessness and male affection, but Dead Man’s Wire doesn’t leave much room for these characters to step out of archetype. (One can only imagine where the initial version of the film – with Werner Herzog attached to direct and Nicolas Cage as Kiritsis – may have deviated from the course.)
Colman Domingo as radio DJ Fred Temple in Dead Man’s Wire.Mongrel Media
Dead Man’s Wire is a largely middle-of-the-road crime thriller that universalizes its high stakes. However, it also reveals a historically incongruous theme: a preoccupation with Black revolutionary aesthetics that is ill-fitting on the Kiritsis story. The film’s tag line – “His revolution was televised” – immediately evokes the 1971 Black Liberation poem-song The Revolution Will Not Be Televised by Gil Scott-Heron, which also plays over the end credits.
If Kiritsis’s “revolution” was indeed televised, it was the image of a white man in broad daylight fleeing the crime scene while police disarmed themselves upon request, eventually offering him airtime to broadcast his grievances – to be heard, understood and even celebrated. Whether or not Van Sant’s film recognizes the heavy irony of this message, his maligned gunslinger, found not guilty by reason of insanity, would never ride off into the sunset.
Special to The Globe and Mail