Screening at Venice: Gus Van Sant’s ‘Dead Man’s Wire’

There’s something to be said about movies that are just good enough, especially those that refashion real events into cinematic junk food. It is, however, hard not to be disappointed when one such work comes from Gus Van Sant, which makes Dead Man’s Wire a frustrating experience despite its climactic vigor. The tale of a disgruntled Hoosier who takes a rich man hostage in 1977, the film re-creates the lengthy standoff in immense visual detail but rarely probes beneath the surface of its colorful characters and relegates any sense of tension or intrigue to its climactic scenes.

Van Sant has made several biopics (or pseudo-biopics) involving American gun violence, from the Palme d’Or-winning school shooter drama Elephant (2003) to the Oscar-winning gay rights drama Milk (2008). After decades of doing so, any artist is likely to lose their fascination with the subject, given how it’s ground to a standstill politically. And yet, the director presses on despite this, crafting a film where the threat of pulling a trigger is rarely riveting and even verges on doltish at times, as troubled Indianapolis resident Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård) tethers a wire to himself, his shotgun, and his wealthy would-be victim Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery), in a kind of janky proto-Saw trap set to go off if the police intervene. But while the drama seldom feels zealous or threatening, it’s underscored by disappointment and disillusionment, the kind that has driven the weary Kiritsis to hold Hall at gunpoint.

Whatever Van Sant’s feelings about this kind of subject matter may have once been, he appears to now translate them through a lens of sheer exhaustion. “Here,” the movie gestures wearily. “Another one of these. Pew pew.” It is, on one hand, fascinating to watch a film whose director seems fed up with his own characters and with the very premise of being driven to gun violence while fashioning oneself into a martyr. And yet, Van Sant’s Taxi Driver-esque tale (by way of Fargo; his delusional anti-hero is surprisingly polite) lives in the body of a based-on-real-events saga without embodying the reality from which it draws.

Kiritsis, like Van Sant, is methodical, and the character responds to each of his plans going awry with a scrappy backup ploy (and a backup to each backup). This results in him kidnapping Hall from the fancy offices of his family mortgage company instead of his elderly father (an underutilized Al Pacino), who happens to be on vacation, and taking Hall to his cramped apartment as a number of policemen—with whom he happens to be friends—roll their eyes while in pursuit. Kiritsis’ motives are gradually revealed, and his demands involve apologies and restitution. His public declarations over the TV and radio establish how heroically he sees himself, so it’s no surprise that he foolishly believes the world to be entirely on his side, to the point that he thinks he’s in no danger of being arrested once things are all said and done.

It’s all very interesting on paper. The oddball case makes you wonder whether a crime so idiosyncratic really transpired, and the performances do a great job of selling the oddity of it all. Skarsgård, although he taps into Kiritsis’ wounded-animal nature and occasional snappiness, is a treat to watch in the moments he dials back and acts completely casually, as though trying to convince Hall he’s approachable despite holding a 12-gauge Winchester to his neck. Montgomery, meanwhile, eschews the usual charisma for which he’s cast and makes himself physically meek and small, embodying a sniveling desperation that, on occasion, makes Kiritsis’ grievances seem worth considering.

However, Van Sant never pushes Dead Man’s Wire in either of these two directions and instead lets it wallow in a casual middle ground. The unfolding action is never farcical enough to make the film satirical or outright funny, but it’s also never imbued with enough historical gravity to truly matter. Snapshot re-creations of known photos and news footage, and the presence of locally popular field reporters and radio hosts (played by Myha’la and Colman Domingo, respectively) seek to clarify the film’s reality, but these characters end up bit players in its opaque dramatic fabric rather than becoming living, breathing people crossing paths with an extraordinary, potentially violent scenario. The bigger picture, the moving pieces, and the various plans and strategies to save Hall never fade into view.

When it comes time for the standoff to end, the questions of how it’ll wrap up, who’ll survive, and which somewhat personable character will be forced to pull the trigger grant Dead Man’s Wire a temporary intensity. This last hurrah isn’t quite “too little too late,” but its rushed follow-through leaves the film’s mere 105 minutes feeling somewhat purposeless in the grand scheme of things. It’s a tale with no purpose beyond letting viewers know, with a bemused cadence, that something quirky once happened in Indianapolis and that it could’ve been much more destructive—and perhaps much more enrapturing—than it really was.

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