Dead Man's Wire

(Gus Van Sant, USA, 2025)

“The revolution will not be televised,” rapped Gil Scott-Heron – except, inadvertently, for 3 days in Indianapolis in 1977.

Disgruntled Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård) took extreme action against the mortgage company he believed had tricked him out a piece of real estate for its own gain. He kidnapped Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery), wiring him to a loaded shotgun.

Proclaiming himself a hero, Kiritsis addressed demands via telephone to police and the media – and especially to Fred (Colman Domingo), a black (and ultra-smooth) radio DJ. The tale becomes, via this route, a populist fable: an average, put-upon citizen talking (and preaching) directly to all the variously oppressed folk (mirrors of himself) of the nation.

Kiritsis is, however, a complicated – and eccentric – ‘hero of the people’. His judgement is clouded by a strong dose of delusion and paranoia; his cause, nonetheless, is just. He’s foolish and righteous in equal measure. Mainly, he is simply improvising – often awkwardly – in the moment, led to this crucible by personal rage and social contradiction entwined.

Gus Van Sant, in one of his most sheerly entertaining and exhilarating films, shows us this situation from every ethical angle – including a chilling depiction of the hostage’s stern, expediency-minded father, M.L. Hall (Al Pacino in a small but terrific role, better than most he gets these days).

Van Sant’s gift for pastiching the audiovisual forms of yesteryear is on full display here – as it was in his large contribution to Ryan Johnson’s TV series Feud: Capote vs. the Swans (2024). It is curious to see Van Sant tread increasingly on a turf once associated so strongly with Oliver Stone.

From a related contextual angle, the film finds itself part of a 1970s nostalgia wave – that is to say, nostalgic more for the adventurous cinema of that time than for the decade itself. Both Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind (2025, with its curious, indirect debt to Antonioni’s The Passenger [1975]) and Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another (2025 – I love it!) ride this wave.

There is an intriguing analysis of contemporary media, and a quasi-Situationist view of the ‘media spectacle’, inscribed in Van Sant’s drama. Dead Man’s Wire delights in presenting a ‘show’ in which the mass media can no longer fully control the ‘live’ material it has the proud, unique capacity to transmit. (Again from the lost ‘70s, Robert Altman’s Nashville [1975] waves as a precedent.)

Mediatic chaos – and the possibility of unleashing Kiritsis’ subversive message far and wide – reigns for a fleeting moment.

MORE Van Sant: Elephant, Finding Forrester, Last Days, Psycho, Good Will Hunting

© Adrian Martin 3 November 2025 / 14 July 2026