After not directing a film since 2018, Van Sant comes back with a vengeance with this solid and unflinching Dead Man's Wire. This "based on real events" film tells a long forgotten story about a man who felt he was pushed over the edge and takes a mortgage company's CEO's son hostage to get what he's entitled to. Of coarse it doesn't go well, and much of Dead Man's Wire's point is to show just how little changes and how little consequences there are people who exploit the system, but the strength of the film is in the way it humanizes those involved, from those we may sympathize with or those we may not.
Skarsgård has been making a career out of oddball rolls despite fitting a far more heartthrob type and this may be my favourite big swing of his. He does not play Kiritsis as a well man but he also doesn't play him stereotypically "crazy". He crafts a very relatable irrational personal in a way that walks a very thin line. Montgomery is strong opposite him, showing us his very human side while never quite vindicating him and his choices. While Pacino is always always great, especially as scumbags, my favourite "stunt" casting is Domingo as a radio personality who is all personality.
But it is Van Sant's skilled direction which pulls it all together energizing this story in a way that makes it so compelling without sensationalizing it. In the end it is a sad tale with no happy endings but without a big American drama. It is the subtle things he does such as mixing in "news footage" and this brilliant moment when the news is about to interrupt regular TV programming which is footage of John Wayne receiving an award with clip after clip of him shooting people in movies. Sometimes legendary directors have these little gems in their oeuvre and sometimes it reminds us just how they became legends in the first place.
Dead Man's Wire
Starring: Bill Skarsgård, Dacre Montgomery, Cary Elwes, Myha'la, Colman Domingo, Al Pacino, Kelly Lynch
Director: Gus Van Sant
Writer: Austin Kolodney
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