Fifty years after he stuck up a bank as Sonny Wortzik in 1975’s NYC crime classic Dog Day Afternoon, Al Pacino switches sides in the class war by embodying The Man in Dead Man’s Wire.
Like Sidney Lumet’s hallowed predecessor, Gus Van Sant’s film—premiering Sept. 2 at this year’s Venice Film Festival—is a based-on-real-events saga of a hard-working 1970s nobody whose grievances and frustration drive him to drastic ends, instigating a law enforcement crisis and media firestorm that the director casts as a microcosm of the tensions boiling beneath Western society’s surface.
It may be a story from decades ago, but in this age of Luigi Mangione, it’s a snapshot of violent anti-establishment resentment and fury that’s eerily timely—and smartly leaves its own perspective on its mayhem open for debate.
Toward the conclusion of Dead Man’s Wire, a live press conference interrupts an awards show tribute to John Wayne—a sly nod to the fact that the clear-cut good and evil of the Duke’s beloved Westerns has given way to the chaos of the contemporary moment.
In this instance, that madness is caused by Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård), who on Tuesday, Feb. 8, 1977, walks into Meridian Mortgage’s building in downtown Indianapolis with a long cardboard box under one arm, a sling to support the other arm, and an eagerness to see bigwig broker M.L. Hall (Pacino).
When he learns that M.L. is in Florida, he’s incensed, but he agrees to meet with the man’s son Richard (Dacre Montgomery), who takes him up to his dad’s office. There, Tony hands him blueprints that, much to Richard’s surprise, are for a weapon, and before he can react, Tony has a pistol pointed at his back.
That gun isn’t Richard’s biggest problem, because Tony has also brought along a shotgun that he attaches to Richard via a metal wire that’s additionally wrapped around the trigger; one sudden move and his head will cease to exist. Tony is a jittery live-wire and cinematographer Arnaud Potier’s camerawork is similarly anxious, dancing around its subjects with fretful volatility.
Dead Man’s Wire immerses itself in this calamity in its opening minutes, and its tension rarely flags as its incensed protagonist carries out his plan. First, that requires calling 911 to rant about “the biggest devils there are—loan companies” and to inform them that he’s taking Richard back to his apartment. Since his car’s key broke off in the ignition, Tony decides to use Richard’s vehicle instead. During their trek outside, they’re swarmed by cops, including Mike (Carey Elwes), who knows Tony and can’t believe this “s–tshow.”
For expediency’s sake, Tony opts to steal another officer’s ride, and he and Richard make it safely back to his residence, which has been wired with explosives to keep the fuzz at bay, and is decorated with books like Urban Poor, Rural Forgotten and Silent Coup.
With each successive step, Dead Man’s Wire reveals a bit more about Tony’s calculated preparations and, with it, his shrewdness. Simultaneously, it divulges—through snippets of dialogue and TV news reports—the reason for this kidnapping.
Tony is mad as hell because he purchased a plot of land that he aimed to sell for millions to a shopping center developer, only to wind up holding the bag for its costs when M.L. and Richard supposedly went behind his back and swayed those buyers to look elsewhere. Incapable of taking it anymore, Tony now demands restitution to the tune of $5 million, as well as immunity from prosecution and, most importantly, a formal apology from M.L.
Van Sant sticks closely to Skarsgård’s God’s Lonely Man, who’s fed up with being treated as a “patsy” by the powers-that-be, and the actor, decked out in a mustache, banged haircut, and gold chain, makes his righteous anger understandable even as his behavior resonates as unhinged.
Dead Man’s Wire walks a tightrope between empathy and condemnation, recognizing Tony as the screwy byproduct of a United States society that doesn’t always play fair and teaches those with gripes that they can resolve their problems with firearms. Unfortunately, though, Austin Kolodney’s script doesn’t go quite far enough, concentrating so heavily on Tony’s moment-to-moment actions and reactions that it’s hard to feel much concern for his complaints or well-being.
Dead Man’s Wire’s plot is embellished with occasional cutaways to television reporter Linda Page (Myha’la)—a Black woman who views this unfolding story as her ticket to getting on primetime—and it ultimately involves local DJ Fred Temple (Colman Domingo), whom Tony loves and calls in order to get his message out to the public.
Yet the masses (and their feelings about this saga) feel distant, and Van Sant’s commentary on true-crime media coverage and the hunger for validation via celebrity (à la To Die For) is underdeveloped. Nonetheless, Domingo is his usual captivating self as the radio host, even if the film introduces him as Tony’s begrudging conduit only to drop him toward its conclusion.
Whether complaining about the way his burrito has been bisected while sitting poolside, or watching the boob-tube news in his Sunshine State hotel room, Pacino radiates old-money arrogance and cruelty, which becomes manifest when he refuses, with his son’s life on the line, to apologize on the phone to Tony, and in fact impugns the kidnapper’s manhood.
In a few brief scenes, Pacino makes a big, juicy impression, thereby providing Tony with a larger-than-life antagonist who can live up to his delusions about the evildoers responsible for his misfortune. Save for Skarsgård, however, the rest of the cast is rather unremarkable, with Montgomery blandly harried as hostage Richard, and Elwes hammy and peripheral as Mike.
To set his period-piece mood, Van Sant digs deep into the bag of ’70s-cinema tricks: split screens, color filters, archival non-fiction material, and freeze frames executed in both color and black and white. Those devices can’t help Dead Man’s Wire approximate the blistering angst and electricity of Dog Day Afternoon, nor can Skarsgård’s strong turn as the beleaguered Tony. Still, if never truly explosive, it’s a striking reminder that little-guy anger—and the gun craziness inspired by it—have long been par for the American course.
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