Gus Van Sant’s latest holds you hostage. You’re stuck right by Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård), who on February 8, 1977 strolled up to the offices of his mortgage broker, the Meridian Mortgage company, and wrapped a thin wire around the neck of the owner’s son, Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery). One jerk, one stumble, one dash for freedom – the wire would pull, the shotgun attached to the other end would fire, and Richard’s head would be blown to smithereens. It’s a contraption called the “dead man’s wire”, which also lends the film its title.
Yet, what feels claustrophobic about Dead Man’s Wire is less its imminent threat (if you don’t know how the real-life tale ended), but the audience’s proximity to Tony, who possesses Skarsgard’s globe-sized eyeballs, to which the actor’s added a twitchy intensity, a moustache, and a fringe that looks as if it’s been hacked with shears. He’s as volatile as his contraption, but so insistent on being heard that there’s no choice but to listen.
He’s a fascinating guy – a symbol of the era’s combustibility, but also of ours, with Luigi Mangione still currently on trial – in search of a fascinating biopic to tell his story. Dead Man’s Wire isn’t it. Van Sant and his screenwriter Austin Kolodney keep us pinned so close to the situation, the wire so tight around our necks, that we barely have the opportunity to look around.
It’s a film, instead, that focuses on historical specificity. Kiritsis relies on cassette tapes and corded telephones to communicate to the public. He drinks milk. He fanboys over local radio DJ Fred Temple (Colman Domingo) – in real life it was a newsman, Fred Heckman, but the job switch allows the film to open with the sharp beats of Eumir Deodato’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra (2001)”.
You could, perhaps, even detect a hint of nostalgia in all this panic and chaos. There’s the masterful way that Fred, with Domingo’s spell of a voice, manipulates his own celebrity to guide Kiritsis right to where the authorities need him. Or there’s the dogged, principled work of television journalist Linda Page (Industry’s Myha’la, who nails the Seventies patter) – all of it wrapped up in dreams of when the media really had the power to light a candle in the dark. Meanwhile, the police try and fail to get the upper hand over a guy whose getaway car fails on him before he’s even made his move. It’s a “f***ing shit show”, Detective Michael Grable (Cary Elwes) concludes.
While police psychologists write the word “anger” on a blackboard and scratch their chins, it’s fairly obvious for anyone in the room with Kiritsis that he’s motivated by the same proletariat rage that drives everyone else. He’s been screwed over by money guys and they’ve gotten away with it consequence free. Hall’s father is played by Al Pacino, with a Foghorn Leghorn accent and a glee that only acting legends are entitled to. Van Sant, who’s made his fair share of portraits of the American psyche, from To Die For (1995) to Elephant (2003), is clearly thinking of and quoting from Pacino’s Dog Day Afternoon (1975) here.
Kiritsis, however, is an unusually self-conscious outlaw. Most of his speeches are concerned with convincing the public he’s just an average Joe; he’s frustrated when his press conference clashes with John Wayne’s acceptance speech for a People’s Choice award, as Van Sant cuts in various clips of his Western heroics. Where in the public consciousness is the line drawn between thief and Robin Hood? Van Sant may ask the question, but his vision’s too narrow to answer it.
Dir: Gus Van Sant. Starring: Bill Skarsgård, Dacre Montgomery, Cary Elwes, Myha’la, Colman Domingo, Al Pacino. Cert 15, 106 minutes.
‘Dead Man’s Wire’ is in cinemas from 20 March
