The live-editing workshop is an integral part of each edition of Critics Campus, and this year, four members of the cohort were assigned Gus Van Sant’s blackly comedic 1970s-set thriller Dead Man’s Wire. After penning their reviews, the participants sat through an intensive revision session with The Guardian deputy culture editor Sian Cain. Read their final reviews below.
 

By Guy Webster

With Dead Man’s Wire, Gus Van Sant revisits the satirical style of his much-loved 1995 mockumentary To Die For to pay homage to the New Hollywood crime thriller. The film is based on a true story; after falling behind on repayments for a mortgage he took out to build a shiny new shopping mall, struggling property developer Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård) wakes up one crisp February morning in 1977 Indianapolis and decides to kidnap his slimy mortgage broker, Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery). We meet Tony at the beginning of his revenge plot, striding into Meridian Mortgage with a fake arm brace and a shotgun ready to expose the corruption that has put him in debt – a Robin Hood in flared chinos.

In To Die For, Suzanne Stone’s (Nicole Kidman) murderous desire for notoriety represents a distinctly 90s nihilism, motivated by fame for fame’s sake. Here, at least initially, Tony understands fame as a way to achieve justice. Instead of Suzanne staring down the barrel of the camera with her steely blue gaze to tell us, “You’re not anybody in America unless you’re on TV,” we have Tony, doe-eyed and with a thin 70s porn-stache, pointing his gun at his lounge room television because he’s worried John Wayne’s honorary Oscar might distract the local news from his fumbling attempt at kidnapping and the political message it represents.

But then he stops threatening Wayne and looks to Richard with the sincerity of a friend rather than a man who’s been holding someone hostage for three days. Skarsgård’s boyish charm replaces the jaded cynicism of Kidman with a more humane pursuit of fame underpinned by playful naivety and earnestness. When Tony gazes at Richard, it’s suddenly clear his desire for fame is not only motivated by revenge; he also wants to resolve his loneliness.

Skarsgård’s larger-than-life, at times heavy-handed performance reaches for the icon status of Van Sant’s fame-hungry Suzanne and the tragic historical celebrity of someone like Harvey Milk, as played by Sean Penn in 2008’s Milk. If Tony doesn’t quite get there, his desperation affords him a new status: that of the tragicomic figure for whom fame isn’t a gun but a way to get his friends to answer his calls.

Reviews have compared Dead Man’s Wire to Dog Day Afternoon (1975) and French Connection (1971), but the closest parallel to Tony’s charming if childlike need to be understood is, in fact, JB Mooney (Josh O’Connor) in Kelly Reichardt’s 70s-set crime thriller Mastermind (2025). Reichardt’s and Van Sant’s gangly leading men stumble through their films as if striving for the validation that being a leading man would afford. Coaching a room full of local police on how to negotiate with Tony, a federal agent puts it simply: “The key is to make him feel like he has an audience.”

The fact that Reichardt shares Van Sant’s sunny, corduroy-filled time period helps us understand this resurgence of interest in New Hollywood. This was a decade reckoning with the failure of ‘free love’ and the flatlining ambitions of the 1968 student protests. In other words, it was defined by a near-apathetic sense of directionlessness that resembles our own. Tony craves fame as a way to connect with other people and regain his purpose. If these corrupt men won’t let him build a shopping mall, he can at least feel connected to those watching him instead of John Wayne. As his captive audience, we both fulfil his desire to feel seen and realise the depths of our own.

By Heather Fraser

A frantic hostage situation punctuated by relatable quirks and foibles; otherwise-tense moments guided by the gentle, jazzy stylings of Labi Siffre; and a criticism of the manipulative, impersonal powers of TV broadcast news. The vibe of the New Hollywood movement is strong in Gus Van Sant’s Dead Man’s Wire – but there’s little else happening beyond that vibe.

Set in 1977 Indianapolis, the film tells the real-life story of disgruntled businessman Tony Kiritsis (played by Bill Skarsgård), who held mortgage broker Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery) hostage by wiring a shotgun to the back of his head, set to blow from any sudden movement. Kiritsis then entered a stand-off with the police, seeking advice and recognition from his favourite radio DJ, Fred Temple (Colman Domingo).

Skarsgård is fun as a wildcard whose descent into violence is complicated by his odd, personal charm and empathetic disposition. Yet his performance and the film at large are both difficult to separate from one landmark New Hollywood title, also based on a true hostage situation in the 1970s United States: Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon (1975). The similarities become especially hard to ignore given that Al Pacino, who plays the erratic, sweaty perpetrator in Lumet’s film, also stars in Dead Man’s Wire as wrinkly, grey M.L. Hall, Richard’s father.

Pacino’s inclusion in the latter is distractingly inert; his character engages with the crisis from afar as he is on holiday in Florida. With the actor’s scenes shown separately from those of the other cast, and his performance not an especially notable one, his presence is most effective as an intertextual, knowing nod to Lumet’s film. When Pacino appears, any possible allusions to Dog Day Afternoon become solid comparisons, and the cracks in Dead Man’s Wire begin to show. Van Sant’s film mirrors the classic’s tone, plot, characters and message, and even has its star, yet lacks its forebear’s impact.

What is the point of a careful stylistic pastiche if the result doesn’t do anything meaningful with the material? The 1970s are rendered here in gorgeous, loving strokes in the cinematic language of the era, including the use of handheld camerawork and an earthy colour palette. New Hollywood’s melding of genre with realistic textures and a vérité style are evident here, too. But the filmmakers of this movement – Lumet, William Friedkin, Francis Ford Coppola and many more – made these stylistic choices with intention. New Hollywood was, among other things, a radical response to a changing artistic landscape: auteurism was entering the US studio system, and the repeal of the Hays Code paved the way for more narrative exploration. But Dead Man’s Wire’s tonal and technical odes to the era don’t extend to having a sense of purpose. The film pays no mind to our current moment, nor does it add to our understanding of the 70s. In doing so, it creates a hollow simulacrum that can only offer the audience memories of better movies.

Skarsgård is great to watch, balancing menace, charm and excitability well; he succeeds where other aspects of the film falter. However, his performance isn’t especially unique, evocative or boundary-pushing, and his energy isn’t enough to elevate the production as a whole. Dead Man’s Wire certainly doesn’t live up to the legacy of Van Sant, a director previously known for breaking the mould and creating original works, who now seemingly pumps out movies that are familiar and dull. Dead Man’s Wire is a somewhat enjoyable if well-trodden romp, but it’s also ultimately unfulfilling. It leaves the audience with a hunger for something fresh and insightful – or just anything at all.

By Wen-Juenn Lee

In one very strange photograph, a man holds a sawn-off shotgun to another man’s neck. There is something intimate about how close they are to each other, how the hostage cocks his neck to one side as if in submission. This image sits at the centre of Gus Van Sant’s Dead Man’s Wire, which is based on the true story of Tony Kiritsis in 1977. Tony (Bill Skarsgård) kidnaps his mortgage lender, Richard “Dick” Hall (Dacre Montgomery), from the office and takes him back to his apartment. Tony believes Dick has cheated him out of the opportunity to be a landlord. He wants the company to forgive his debts and pay him compensation. He wants justice.

What keeps the police at bay is the ‘dead man’s wire’: a booby-trap connecting the two men and the gun that prevents Dick from escaping – and anyone else from interfering.

This wire also creates something homoerotic in their dynamic. In public, the two men are physically tethered as a choreographic, if slightly clumsy, unit; but in the privacy of Tony’s home, the wire connects them intimately, putting Dick under Tony’s care. Montgomery embodies Dick’s transformation from powerful to powerless as something almost grotesque: he shrinks, he bows, he sweats. At one point, Tony brings a glass of milk to Dick’s mouth; he addresses his captive cheerfully, conspiratorially; he asks about Dick’s wife, his dog. While the police attempt a hostage negotiation, the true negotiation happens furtively, fleetingly, between Tony and Dick.

In the hands of Skarsgård, Tony is twitchy, neurotic and, at times, oddly appealing. He repeatedly represents himself as the little man who just wants what he is owed. His anger is unbridled yet weepy; he betrays a desperation to be afforded the American Dream rather than a desire to destroy it. We know that Tony has borrowed money from Meridian Mortgage to buy a plot of land to develop a shopping mall; the capitalist, consumerist US fantasy must continue. But right now, the revolution is confined to Tony’s living room.

Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia (2025) also features kidnapping as an exercise of politics, but whereas that film engages in political critique, Dead Man’s Wire focuses on the eroticism that comes from the reversal of power. In the beginning, Tony throws out nonsensical observations or barks out imperatives; near the film’s end, though, it’s unclear who is leading the conversation and who wants it to continue. What is genuine, and what is a dance? If Tony has to play out the role of the unyielding kidnapper, then Dick must portray that of the vulnerable hostage; both are performing something to get them to where they are. “I recognise the privilege, financially—” Dick begins, but Tony interrupts, “Do you recognise the privilege that your daddy gave you the corner office and that fancy president title of yours?” When Dick shows vulnerability, Tony changes direction. “What’s your mom like?” There is something sensual, almost seductive in how Dick lowers his eyes, smiles, the pause in his reply: “Brown hair and big smile. How about you?”

Outside of Tony’s apartment, more and more people get drawn into the drama of the hostage operation, from Tony’s favourite local DJ, Fred Temple (Colman Domingo), and the FBI to Tony’s family and Dick’s father (Al Pacino). We witness the push and pull of negotiation, of what the state and the company will compromise on – if they compromise at all. Dead Man’s Wire follows the public machinery of these types of discussions, but what strikes me as its core, what lingers in my mind, is what is negotiated privately between its two leading men. The film’s energy relies on this.

By Alia Ardon

As my MIFF Critics Campus mentor sent me off to write this review, she said, “Every film is a miracle. We want to honour the parting of the sea.” Sadly, Gus Van Sant’s Dead Man’s Wire parted no sea for me.

As the muddled crime film opens, we are plunged into a quotidian Tuesday morning in the 1970s, when a dishevelled man, befitted with a sling and a peculiar rectangular cardboard box, fumbles his way into a glitzy lobby in snowy Indianapolis. Tony Kiritsis (a convincing Bill Skarsgård) says he has a meeting, though he looks out of place. Minutes later, we understand why. His box contains a shotgun fitted with a ‘dead man’s wire’: a triggered device to be wrapped around his hostage’s neck, ensuring they will be killed should his demands be ignored.

Tony and this story are both real: overwhelmed by debt, Kiritsis held his mortgage broker, Richard Hall (played here by Dacre Montgomery), hostage in 1977. In Van Sant’s telling, scripted by first-time feature writer Austin Kolodney, the crux of the story is class: Tony rages against insidious systems in which your credit score defines your quality of life, and through which the abyss between the working and ruling classes only grows.

As Tony’s DIY hostage operation escalates, so does the tension outside the homoerotic bubble that forms between Tony and Richard. Tone-deaf officials gather from all corners of society in a pseudo-strategy room to try to understand Tony. Even an FBI profiler is called in to investigate. “Talk to me about Tony’s psychology,” he demands. A local cop shrugs: “He’s mad.” It seems evident to me that there is little to understand except that Tony’s violence is an inevitable offshoot of capitalism, and that he who dares point a finger at the unfairness of this system will be deemed insane.

When Labi Siffre’s soft and charming ‘Cannock Chase’ floats into the theatre and scores the moment that we expect will be an intense police car chase, my cynicism fades. The track achieves an interesting subversion: the chase becomes meditative and gives us a moment to consider Tony’s actions – to interrogate whom, exactly, the media and police are trailing. This moment of inspiration stands in contrast to the rest of the misplaced soundtrack.

Ultimately, it is not the state or the lawyers who manage to get through to Tony; it is the suave local radio presenter Fred Temple (a well-used Colman Domingo), with whom Tony has a parasocial relationship. As a radio host, Fred is tuned in to the pulse of the people and accompanies them to and from work. What Tony ultimately caves to is the arts, the radio that he respects. He wants bread, but he wants roses, too.

Dead Man’s Wire walks a tightrope between retelling a true story and levelling a critique of contemporary US life, but it topples from the get-go. The film’s socially neutral stance on the questions it poses is uninspiring. It has the opportunity to comment on how the working class’s rightful rage has historically been unjustly pathologised, but pulls back. Kiritsis’s experience speaks so clearly to how mental instability has been weaponised in the name of capitalism, and yet Van Sant ends up perpetuating this very stereotype.

As the film concludes, it does not lay blame on Tony. But although Dead Man’s Wire asks us to consider his humanity, it falls short of doing so – condemning him to insanity, rather than giving credence to his demands for financial justice.

Dead Man’s Wire screens in Melbourne cinemas on Saturday 8, Thursday 13, Wednesday 19 and Friday 21 August and in regional cinemas on Saturday 15, Sunday 16 and Friday 21 August as part of the MIFF 2026 program.

The above has been written as part of MIFF’s Critics Campus program. The opinions expressed are the authors’ and do not necessarily reflect that of the festival.