Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård) sits in his shabby, beat-down car outside a dreary block of office buildings, his arm in a sling and his face covered in a sheen of sweat that seems out-of-place for the cold February day. He turns his key, and it breaks in the ignition. Cursing, he stumbles out of his car and towards the building across the street, his one good arm carrying an unwieldy cardboard box. It’s downtown Indianapolis in the dead of winter, 1977. And Tony Kiritsis is about to kick off a media sensation that will grip the nation.
It’s a low-key start to a relatively small movie, one that seems an unlikely comeback for Gus Van Sant, the director behind such classics as My Own Private Idaho and Good Will Hunting. But Dead Man’s Wire, which is inspired by the true story of a three-day hostage standoff, is a taut, screwy crime thriller that plays like gangbusters from the moment that Tony Kiritsis whips a shotgun out of his box and takes his mortgage broker Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery) hostage. It’s a thrilling comeback for Van Sant, who hadn’t had a major critical hit since 2008’s Milk and whose last film, Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot, was released eight years ago. And though Dead Man’s Wire, with its quiet January release, seems destined to be similarly as forgotten as Van Sant’s other recent films, its surprisingly timely story and crowdpleasing antics make it a movie that deserves better than to be buried.
