"On February 8, 1977, Indianapolis businessman Tony Kiritzis (Bill Skarsgard) kidnapped Richard Hall, a mortgage company president (Stranger Things' Dacre Montgomery), claiming that Hall's company had sabotaged his real estate investment. Kiritzis rigged a 12-gauge shotgun with a hair-trigger "dead man's wire" around Hall's neck, ensuring that Hall would die if police sharpshooters tried to kill him. He held Hall for three days as police, family members, a charismatic local radio DJ (Colman Domingo) and TV reporters were drawn into the standoff."
"He sees himself as a common man standing up to a system rigged against people like him, and when Van Sant cuts to Hall's father, the mortgage company's smugly unctuous, fat-cat founder (Al Pacino) vacationing in Florida, there's no question where your sympathies are meant to lie. The film is designed as a timely reminder that when financiers sell the American dream, there's often fine print that keeps it just out of reach and a gripping, often hilarious, and briskly entertaining reminder it is."
Dead Man's Wire dramatizes a 1977 Indianapolis hostage incident in which Tony Kiritzis kidnapped mortgage-president Richard Hall, rigging a 12-gauge shotgun with a hair-trigger "dead man's wire" around Hall's neck. The standoff drew police, family, a charismatic local radio DJ, and TV reporters. The film frames Kiritzis as a common man confronting a rigged system and positions audience sympathies against the mortgage company's founder. The film critiques financiers selling the American dream with fine print that excludes many. The 2026 film lineup also includes generation-spanning tales of Palestinian dislocation, films about young motherhood in Belgium, colonial legacies, and colorful holiday awards contenders.
Read at www.npr.org
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