RIOTUS

Gus Van Sant has been one of my favorite directors for years, and it’s very good to see him back in the film world. He’s always had an interesting perspective on subjects that connect with the current zeitgeist happening in our American culture. It’s what drew me to Dead Man’s Wire, a film inspired by a true story from the late 1970s. He said this in his Director’s Statement –

“The film is based on the true story of Tony Kiritsis, a man who, in 1977, felt deceived and cornered by the system he trusted most. Believing his mortgage company had exploited him at his most vulnerable, he took drastic and very public action to reclaim a sense of power and justice. His story is both deeply human and profoundly unsettling—an act of rage that became a cry to be heard.”

Kiritsis, portrayed by Bill Skarsgård, draws you in with an excellent performance that’s as charismatic as his actions are terrible and problematic. Dacre Montgomery as Richard Hall does well as his foil, the man he kidnapped as his hostage, to get the mortgage company he partially owns to negotiate his debt to them away. I was very impressed by his performance here. For the most part, I’d only known him from playing Jason in the Power Rangers reboot, and I thought he was fine. Here, his performance, going back and forth with Skarsgård, he ends up holding his own. Montgomery is able to pull so much empathy for Richard through his performance. The film doesn’t make you pick Kiritis’ side, but in these days and times, it’s easy to see his point of view now more than maybe the public did back then. Yet the whole time you’re like, poor Richard, I hope he makes it out of this.

Al Pacino plays M.L. Hall, Richard’s father and owner of the business, who is playing hardball and is entirely callous to his son’s situation. Pacino plays him so well because, man, oh man, it was easy to hate this guy, who honestly has a on-paper realistic response. It’s still fun seeing Pacino play an evil asshole. Colman Domingo gets to play a nice, subtle role as radio DJ Fred Temple, the only person Kiritsis will talk to. The warm, deep voice who has a jazz show is something this unhindged guy connects to and tells the world why he’s doing it. I liked this character because he was utterly annoyed that he was involved in any of this.

Myha’la plays a TV news reporter, Linda Page, with her cameraman, John (John Robinson), as she plays pretty much what you expect of the reporter in a movie. She’s trying to get the story and follows it until its end, even endangering her life. It’s a pretty light role, but Myha’la is good and welcome when she appears on screen. I do wish the character had a bit more for her to do. The film had a nice, washed-out look. Van Sant and Cinematographer Arnaud Potier did a great job of making the film look like it was made in the 1970s, or I should say how your mind remembers how movies and TV shows looked back then. It helped with the immersive quality of the film.

Overall, the film worked, and it’s a simple story being told as I said, though it does fit in with things happening now and the feeling of people not being able to have a life they can afford, even though they work all the time. The era of stagflation feels comparable to now, and after everything that happened with Luigi Mangione last year, it feels remarkably prescient of what happened in this event from 1977. You could see something happening like this now with the same reasons, even if self-inflicted, leading to what is happening today. I think that is something Gus Van Sant brings about perfectly, along with a good cast. Dead Man’s Wire is something good to see at this time, that’s new and not something that is particularly part of the Awards season circus.