The year was 1977, and the month was February, so you know what that means: Ralph Bakshi’s awesome animated epic “Wizards” was in theaters, and all was right with the world. Except of course in Indianapolis, where failed entrepreneur Tony Kiritsis walked into the office of his mortgage broker, Richard O. Hall, and wired a shotgun to his head. The shotgun would go off if either Kiritsis was shot, or if Richard O. Hall tried to escape. That was the opposite of awesome. All was definitely not right.
The incident was covered on national television and, decades later, explored in Alan Berry and Mark Enochs’ documentary “Dead Man’s Line.” But any story worth telling is worth telling with famous people, so now we have Gus Van Sant’s “Dead Man’s Wire,” starring Bill Skarsgård as Tony Kiritsis, Dacre Montgomery as Richard O. Hall, Al Pacino as Hall’s mortgage broker father (by way of Satan), Colman Domingo as a local DJ who gets dragged into this mess and Cary Elwes as a cop who — wait, really? Because he looks nothing like Cary Elwes in this movie. Huh. Interesting choice. Good performance though.
“Dead Man’s Wire” starts off strong, with events transpiring in real time. Tony drives up to the office and his key immediately breaks off in his ignition, which ruins part of his plan so he’ll just have to wing it. It’s clear, whether you know anything about this true story or not, that something bad is about to happen. Hall is nursing a long cardboard box like it’s got napalm in it. When he gets into Hall’s office, the horror begins: Hall is tied to the weapon, Kiritsis calls the cops, the media gets involved, and whoopsie-daisy, they have to find new transportation, which means parading Hall in that Jigsaw-like death trap for several blocks, in public.
When the second phase of Kiritsis’ plan kicks in, and they make it all the way back to his apartment for a prolonged, multi-day standoff, “Dead Man’s Wire” loses a lot of steam. The story can breathe, obviously, and Kiritsis and Hall can have a few conversations to clear the air and flesh out their characters, but the imminent danger and potential for more chaos has dissipated. Van Sant is, of course, working with what he’s got here, since this is what’s really happened, but he front-loaded “Dead Man’s Wire” with such immediate energy that there’s not much left for Act 2.
Fortunately, Van Sant has a secret weapon: Skarsgård, who shouldn’t be much of a secret anymore, but he’s such a chameleon that I don’t think he gets enough credit. He’s best known for playing monsters like Pennywise the Clown and Nosferatu under gobs and gobs of makeup, but he commits that same focus to every role. In “Dead Man’s Wire” you can see he’s always thinking. Not thinking rationally, necessarily, but always thinking. It’s his master plan and he’s the star of this show. He’s like a Batman villain who got lost on his way to Gotham City, and accidentally left his costume at the dry cleaners.
“Dead Man’s Wire” argues, of course, that Tony Kiritsis had a point to make, even though his plan was vicious. He believes the mortgage company screwed him over. He bought a plot of land in a promising location, but the brokers dissuaded potential renters and jacked up his rates, obliterating his investment. Van Sant’s film never disputes this, and goes out of its way to cast Pacino as Richard O. Hall’s father, and give him explicit instruction to play M.L. Hall as an unforgivable piece of garbage. You know he’s the worst when he tells a waiter he won’t eat his burrito because it wasn’t cut into thirds — as if that’s how anyone eats a burrito — and because the waiter didn’t read his damn mind and know he never eats meat on Tuesdays. By the time he refuses to give Kiritsis a token apology in exchange for his son’s life, under duress no less, because he thinks it’ll cost him money, we hate him almost as much as Tony does.
When “Dead Man’s Wire” works, it’s either because it’s the first act and that’s where all the tension lies, or because Skarsgård is a captivating chaos gremlin, and Montgomery is — in an easily overlooked, but absolutely vital role — an exceptional foil. He’s responsible for Kiritsis’ pains, and he’s got his own crap to deal with, like a dad who’d rather mourn his dead son than screw up his bottom line, but he’s playing it quiet. He’s terrified, almost beyond the capacity to function, for days at a time, and the exhaustion reads on his face at every minute. It’s a comparatively subtle but excellent performance.
But it’s hard to get past it: “Dead Man’s Wire” doesn’t always work. Van Sant’s intensely caffeinated opening eventually crashes out, and the film never completely recovers. If audiences are unfamiliar with the Tony Kiritsis story, the fascination may carry them through, or it may become abundantly clear that his saga wasn’t particularly well-suited to a conventional feature, and only partly works as the real-life thriller that “Dead Man’s Wire” wants to be.
