'Dead Man's Wire' Proves Gus Van Sant Movies Still Matter

"Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård) sits in his shabby, beat-down car outside a dreary block of office buildings, his arm in a sling and his face covered in a sheen of sweat that seems out-of-place for the cold February day. He turns his key, and it breaks in the ignition. Cursing, he stumbles out of his car and towards the building across the street, his one good arm carrying an unwieldy cardboard box. It's downtown Indianapolis in the dead of winter, 1977."

"It's a low-key start to a relatively small movie, one that seems an unlikely comeback for Gus Van Sant, the director behind such classics as My Own Private Idaho and Good Will Hunting. But Dead Man's Wire, which is inspired by the true story of a three-day hostage standoff, is a taut, screwy crime thriller that plays like gangbusters from the moment that Tony Kiritsis whips a shotgun out of his box and takes his mortgage broker Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery) hostage."

"When I saw Dead Man's Wire at the Venice Film Festival in September 2025, it may have had the most uproarious reaction of any other film I'd seen there. Yes, more than Frankenstein, more than After the Hunt, and more than Bugonia (it was more or less equal footing to the reaction that Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice received). People gasped, clapped, and cheered - a sure sign of a major festival hit."

Dead Man's Wire centers on Tony Kiritsis, a battered man who, in downtown Indianapolis during the winter of 1977, retrieves a shotgun from a cardboard box and takes mortgage broker Richard Hall hostage. The narrative dramatizes a true three-day hostage standoff and balances tense moments with darkly comic beats. Bill Skarsgård portrays Kiritsis while Dacre Montgomery plays the broker. Gus Van Sant directs, delivering a lean, crowd-pleasing crime thriller positioned as a comeback after an extended absence. The film generated an uproarious festival reception but faced delayed acquisition and a modest January release via Row K Entertainment.

Read at Inverse