THIS year’s Revelation Film Festival opens with Dead Man’s Wire—and it’s a brilliant choice.
A taut, edge-of-your-seat thriller, the film is not only a technical triumph but packs an emotional punch.
There’s not an ounce of flab on the film, which tells the terrifying true story of the disgruntled “Tony” Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård) who straps a shotgun with a trip-wire around the neck of Meridian Mortgage president Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery) and takes him hostage in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1977.
He then proceeds to walk him through the cold winter streets, commandeer a police car, and make Hall drive him back to his shabby apartment, where he holds him hostage.
Fearing the shotgun may go off at any moment, the audience is on tenterhooks as Kiritsis slips on patches of ice and the car hits bumps in the road.
The source of the Kiritsis’s grievance? he took out a business mortgage with Meridian and claims they duped him on the deal, ruining his life.
Soon Kiritsis is communicating his grievances via his favourite local DJ Fred Temple (Colman Domingo), a chilled-out pot smoker.
He rebroadcasts Kiritsis’s rants, which strike a chord of sympathy and terror in the public.
It’s interesting that even back in 1977, bankers and mortgage lenders were fairly unpopular and it’s not a post-GFC phenomenon.
Director Gus Van Sant does a masterful job of capturing the 1970s vibe.
The drab tones and authentic sets immerse you in the era, and he merges vintage and faux newsreel footage, giving the film a cinema vérité quality.
The storytelling and pace are excellent and the film rollicks along at a good old lick.
Van Sant also does a great job of humanising the men involved.
Kiritsis is multi-faceted, eliciting sympathy and head-shaking in equal measure.
He has a point about the financial system, but his methods are shocking, even if he was pushed to the brink.
Even more impressive is the humanity afforded to Richard Hall.
It would be easy to portray him as greedy and materialistic, but he comes across as a genuinely nice person who has sympathy for Kiritsis and manages the situation with humility, despite having a shotgun strapped to his neck.
The callous unsympathetic nature of the banks and mortgage lenders is instead represented by Richard’s dad M.L. Hall (Al Pacino), the founder of the company, who refuses to yield to Kiritsis’s demands, despite his son’s life being on the line.
There’s a subplot with the laidback DJ Temple being sucked into being an unlikely mouthpiece for Kiritsis.
It’s slightly tonally jarring, but maybe it’s deliberate to highlight the surreal nature of the incident, but it never really goes anywhere.
There’s excellent music and black humour throughout, including some quaint folk music being played in the police car as Kiritsis and Hall are pursued by the cops.
Without spoiling the ending, the true life denouement in court is as bizarre and surprising as the kidnapping.
It reinforces the public’s dislike of powerful banks and financial institutions, or at least the image of how they have the power to ruin the “small person” trying to achieve their dream in America.
Dead Man’s Wire is Van Sant at the peak of his powers.
It’s showing on opening night as part of the Revelation Film Festival on July 8 at Luna Leederville. For more info see revelationfilmfest.org.
by STEPHEN POLLOCK