Gus Van Sant revisits one of America’s strangest true crimes with Dead Man’s Wire, dramatizing Tony Kiritsis’ 1977 hostage spectacle. Bill Skarsgård plays Tony, a man pushed past his limits, who wires a real estate executive (Dacre Montgomery) to a shotgun and parades him before cameras in a desperate plea for recognition.
Skarsgård delivers a raw, unnerving performance, embodying both Tony’s volatility and his warped sense of justice. Van Sant frames the event as both media circus and tragedy, pulling in Colman Domingo as a sympathetic community voice and Al Pacino as an old guard presence watching society buckle.
The film crackles with moral ambiguity: Tony is both villain and victim, a man whose grievances resonate even as his methods horrify. Van Sant avoids sensationalism, instead interrogating how spectacle and suffering intertwine when the cameras roll. Dead Man’s Wire is a haunting, electrifying piece, reminding us that notoriety can feel like survival in a world deaf to quiet desperation.
Dead Man’s Wire is playing at TIFF ’25. For more information, click here.
