Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård) sits in his worn, beat-up car outside a gloomy block of office buildings—arm in a sling, face glistening with sweat that feels out of place on a cold February day. He turns the key, and it snaps in the ignition. Swearing, he stumbles out of the car and heads toward the building across the street, his good arm hauling a bulky cardboard box. It’s downtown Indianapolis in 1977’s deep winter, and Tony Kiritsis is about to spark a media frenzy that will captivate the nation.
It’s an understated start for a relatively small film—an unexpected comeback for Gus Van Sant, the director behind classics like My Own Private Idaho and . But Dead Man’s Wire, inspired by the true story of a three-day hostage standoff, is a tight, quirky crime thriller that grabs attention the moment Tony yanks a shotgun from his box and takes his mortgage broker Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery) hostage. It’s a thrilling return for Van Sant, who hadn’t scored a major critical hit since 2008’s Milk; his last film, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, came out eight years ago. Though Dead Man’s Wire’s quiet January release might seem fated to be as overlooked as Van Sant’s recent works, its surprisingly timely story and crowd-pleasing moments make it a film that deserves better than being buried.
When I saw Dead Man’s Wire at the 2025 Venice Film Festival in September, it may have gotten the most raucous reaction of any film I saw there—more than Frankenstein, After the Hunt, or Bugonia (on par with the response to Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice). People gasped, clapped, and cheered—clear signs of a major festival hit. But it took a week for Row K Entertainment to acquire the film, and another month to set a release date. Then came the dreaded January drop, the long-feared “graveyard” for movies.
But Dead Man’s Wire is more than its release date. A lighthearted riff, the film brims with style (mostly from Colman Domingo’s smooth-voiced radio DJ, an unexpected player in the hostage crisis) and energy. Its 1970s-set story has more than a few parallels to modern concerns. Tony Kiritsis feels wronged and trapped after a bad mortgage broker deal robbed him of (what he believes is) millions of dollars. Now he’s standing up for the little guy—the people forgotten and stepped on by millionaires who couldn’t care less about them.
Played with wide-eyed intensity by Skarsgård, who seamlessly shifts between sympathetic hero and unhinged antagonist, Tony’s rants seem absurd at first.
As we spend more time with Tony, his arguments start to make sense—especially through the 2026 lens, where economic uncertainty seeps into every part of life. He even has the police’s sympathy, mostly because the lead detective (an unrecognizable Cary Elwes) is an old family friend. But the media circus surrounding Tony (which he delights in) mostly gawks at him, turning the entire nation into voyeurs.
Van Sant doesn’t focus much on the media—except for ambitious reporter Linda Page—handling that storyline with gentle satire (one scene shows a clueless reporter simply describing his feelings live on TV). Instead, the film plays mostly as a two-hander between Skarsgård’s Tony and Montgomery’s Richard (who wasn’t his first hostage choice; Tony planned to kidnap Richard’s father, M.L. Hall, played by a laid-back Al Pacino). As Richard spends hours tied to Tony’s shotgun with a “dead man’s wire” (any movement triggers the gun), the two form a strangely intimate bond. Both Skarsgård and Montgomery deliver deeply sympathetic, magnetic performances—half the joy of watching Dead Man’s Wire is their verbal sparring.
Dead Man’s Wire is one of those stranger-than-fiction tales that, in an even weirder twist, feels more relevant today. Despite its semi-satirical edge and crowd-pleasing energy, it’s an important watch. Don’t let it pass you by.