Movie Review: 'Dead Man's Wire' Sees Gus Van Sant Return to His True Crime Roots

"However, no one expects Pacino to put his whole mid-octagenarian, egregiously feather-haired self into what amounts to a glorified cameo. What everyone should expect, though, is that he'll roll that old-ass tongue around an accent that must be from the Kentucky side of Indiana-where Gus Van Sant, Dead Man's Wire director, grew up-because why else would he sound like an ambien'd-up Foghorn Leghorn?"

"Pacino plays mortgage broker M.L. Hall as a pretty straightforward, low-effort Bad Dad, the kind of hyperquiet rich monster who'd rather whisper goodbye to his own son Richard (Dacre Montgomery) than admit to any wrongdoing or compromise with Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård), a desperate behind-on-his-mortgage-payments everyschlub who has taken his son hostage. Dead Man's Wire is based on a real 1977 Indianapolis hostage situation, where the real Tony Kiritsis kidnapped the son of his mortgage broker at the end of a 12-gauge sawed-off shotgun."

"At first glance, Dead Man's Wire looks like a return to the media-obsessed true crime Candyland of Van Sant's early breakthrough To Die For (1995), which was a breakthrough amongst breakthroughs Van Sant enjoyed throughout the late '80s and 90s, squeezed between Good Will Hunting (1997) and the twin triumphs of Portland outsider tales, Drugstore Cowboy (1989) and My Own Private Idaho (1991)."

Dead Man's Wire portrays a 1977 Indianapolis hostage situation in which Tony Kiritsis rigs a sawed-off 12‑gauge shotgun with a wire and takes the son of his mortgage broker hostage. Al Pacino appears in three seated scenes as mortgage broker M.L. Hall, portraying a quiet, unrepentant wealthy father with a peculiar Kentucky-Indiana accent. Bill Skarsgård plays Tony Kiritsis with intense, barely sublimated energy, constantly smoothing his thin mustache. The film evokes Gus Van Sant's earlier media-obsessed true-crime work and his Portland outsider tales while functioning largely as a straightforward, uncomplicated potboiler. This is Van Sant's first feature in seven years.

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