--- title: "Dead Man's Wire" year: 2026 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/dead-mans-wire" fi1m_id: "dead-mans-wire" imdb_id: "tt15181326" tmdb_id: 1263012 wikidata_id: "Q131760057" fi1m_score: 70 critics_score: 71 critics_reviews: 15 published: "2026-09-09" updated: "2026-09-18T08:37:45.800313+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Dead Man's Wire (2026) Directed by Gus Van Sant · 1h 46m · MPA R · Crime, Drama, Thriller ## Identity Dead Man's Wire - **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/dead-mans-wire - **Type:** Film - **Fi1m ID:** dead-mans-wire - **IMDb ID:** tt15181326 - **TMDB ID:** 1263012 - **Wikidata ID:** Q131760057 - **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15181326/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/1263012, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q131760057 **Fi1m score: 70** · Critics 71 from 15 reviews *In a sentence:* A man wires a shotgun to his mortgage broker’s neck and then spends the whole film asking to be liked > Gus Van Sant’s account of the 1977 Kiritsis siege is a tight, sweaty, funny two-hander, and Bill Skarsgård is the reason to see it. What it thinks about the man and the country that made him, it mostly leaves to us. ## Synopsis In 1977, Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård), convinced his mortgage broker has cheated him, walks into the office of Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery), puts a shotgun to his head and wires the trigger to his own neck, so that if Kiritsis goes down, the gun goes off. He marches Hall out of the building and into his own flat, and starts making calls: to the police, to a radio station, to anyone who will put him on air. Cary Elwes, Myha’la and Kelly Lynch are among those on the line and outside the door. Gus Van Sant directs from a script by Austin Kolodney. 106 minutes, certificate 15. ## Review Gus Van Sant has gone back to 1977 and to Tony Kiritsis, who walked into his mortgage broker’s office, put a shotgun to the back of Richard Hall’s head and wired the trigger to his own neck. If the police shoot Kiritsis, the gun goes off. That arrangement is called a dead man’s wire, and the film is built the same way: two men joined at the neck, neither able to let go. It is tight, funny and unpleasant in the right ways, and it is worth your evening. It is also thinner than it thinks. Bill Skarsgård plays Kiritsis as a talker. He talks to Hall, to the police, to a radio station, to anyone who picks up, and the burden of all of it is that he is the injured party and the world owes him a hearing. Skarsgård gives him a boyish grin that arrives half a second before the threat and a habit of turning too fast, and every time he turned we flinched, because the gun turned with him. We laughed a good deal, mostly at his wounded logic, and somewhere in the second half we noticed how far we had gone along with him and did not like it. That unease is the best thing in the film, and it is nearly all his. Dacre Montgomery has the less grateful part. Hall is a decent, frightened man with nothing much to say for himself, and Montgomery plays him that way rather than inventing a spine the man may not have had. He listens, he agrees, he waits. The blandness is on purpose, and it is what keeps Kiritsis talking, so it is doing more work than it looks. Austin Kolodney’s script keeps it indoors, and Stefan Dechant makes each place count: a broker’s office of veneer and brown carpet, then a flat where the curtains stay drawn and the ashtrays fill. Arnaud Potier shoots close and grainy, mostly at the height of a seated man, so that Hall’s face and the barrel share the frame more often than not. Peggy Schnitzer dresses Kiritsis like a man who bought his wardrobe once, some years earlier, and stopped. Saar Klein drops in freeze-frames and snatches of radio that halt the standoff for a few seconds at a time, which could have been cute and instead makes the waiting longer. Danny Elfman writes sparingly and lets the period songs carry the mood. The trouble is everyone else. Cary Elwes as Michael Grable, Myha’la as Linda Page and Kelly Lynch as Mabel Hall are all good in the scenes they get, and they get about a scene and a half each. Vinh Nguyen’s young radio producer, with a hostage-taker on the line and no training for it, is the liveliest thread outside the flat, and the film keeps leaving it to go back inside. We understand why; the flat is where the tension lives. But a siege is also a city holding its breath, and this one rarely gets past the police tape. Van Sant knows what the story is about. A man who believes the money men cheated him, and an institution that would sooner risk a life than say sorry, has not stopped being current, and the film trusts us to notice without being told. That is a fair choice. We also wanted it, just once, to decide whether Kiritsis is a folk hero or a dangerous fool, or to show us why that is the wrong question. It declines, and the last half hour is slighter for it. Sidney Lumet’s *Dog Day Afternoon* (1975) hangs over this, and Van Sant does not pretend otherwise. What he does not borrow is Lumet’s crowd; the street outside the bank was half of what that film had to say. Against his own record this is smaller than [*Milk*](https://film.one/film/milk) (2008) and neater than [*Elephant*](https://film.one/film/elephant) (2003), and it is his most straightforwardly enjoyable film in a long while. See it with someone, because you will want to argue afterwards about how much sympathy he earned, and the film will not settle it for you. At home the flat gets smaller and the wire, if anything, tighter. It runs 106 minutes and carries a 15. How it ended is a matter of record, and we are not going to repeat it. *Fi1m score 70, published 9 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics agree on one thing: Bill Skarsgård’s performance as the hostage-taker Tony Kiritsis carries the film, described variously as jittery, volatile, unnerving and boyishly funny. Beyond him, the praise clusters around the tension of the central standoff, the period detail and the soundtrack, with several reviews reading it as a 1970s throwback in the Dog Day Afternoon mould and calling it Van Sant’s most compelling work in years. The reservations are consistent too. Empire and The Observer find the characters thinly drawn; Vulture, Collider and Paste think the film loses something whenever it widens beyond its two leads, and that the small scale leaves the story’s chaos underused. The spread is moderate, with no outright pans. The Times gives it full marks and calls it his strongest since Milk, while The New York Times, the firmest dissent, finds it low-energy and short of the liveliness the real story deserves. ## Straight answers **Is Dead Man's Wire worth watching?** *Dead Man's Wire* is worth watching, and we scored it 70. Gus Van Sant's account of the 1977 Kiritsis siege is a tight, funny, uncomfortable two-hander, and Bill Skarsgård's talkative hostage-taker is the reason to see it. It has less to say about the man and his country than it seems to think, so go for the performance rather than the argument. **How long is Dead Man's Wire, and what is it rated?** *Dead Man's Wire* runs 1h 46m and is rated R by the MPA in the US. It is a crime and drama film. **Where can I watch Dead Man's Wire in the US?** *Dead Man's Wire* is streaming on Netflix in the US, and it is also available to rent from Amazon Prime Video from $5.99. Availability is checked daily; the links above go straight to each service. **How violent or frightening is Dead Man's Wire, and is it suitable for children?** *Dead Man's Wire* carries a UK 15 certificate and is not suitable for children. The violence is mostly threatened rather than shown: a shotgun sits at a frightened man's head for most of the film, and the tension comes from waiting for it to go off. Teenagers who can take sustained menace and adult language should be fine; the squeamish will find the unease hard to shake. **How does Dead Man's Wire compare to Dog Day Afternoon?** *Dead Man's Wire* borrows openly from [*Dog Day Afternoon*](https://film.one/film/dog-day-afternoon) but keeps the story indoors, in the broker's office and the hostage-taker's flat, where Lumet's film spilled onto a street full of people. That makes Van Sant's film the tighter, smaller one and Lumet's the fuller, with an ensemble the new film cannot match. *Dog Day Afternoon* remains the better film; *Dead Man's Wire* is the leaner watch. **What should I watch after Dead Man's Wire?** After *Dead Man's Wire*, try [*Dog Day Afternoon*](https://film.one/film/dog-day-afternoon) (1975, Fi1m 90): The hostage film this one is measured against, with the crowd it lacks. Then [*Ace in the Hole*](https://film.one/film/ace-in-the-hole) (1951, Fi1m 87): A trapped man, a reporter, and a town that turns the wait into a fair; and [*Elephant*](https://film.one/film/the-elephant-man) (2003, Fi1m 84): Van Sant walking slowly towards violence, with none of this film’s jokes to soften it. ### Reviews we read (21) - **The Times** (5/5): Van Sant refracts the 1977 Kiritsis hostage story through toxic masculinity, with Bill Skarsgård mesmerising as the incel-like kidnapper. The film layers journalistic elements and a strong soundtrack to create Van Sant's strongest work since Milk. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/film/article/dead-mans-wire-review-gus-van-sants-brilliant-take-on-toxic-masculinity-5xds7h9k2) - **Evening Standard**, India Block (80/100, inferred): The critic calls it a nerve-shredding hostage drama that will leave palms sweaty, praising its taut two-hander focus and Bill Skarsgård's deeply unsettling performance as the unhinged kidnapper. It avoids heavy morality tales while highlighting the strange intimacy between captor and hostage amid media frenzy. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/dead-mans-wire-review-bill-skarsgard-gus-van-sant-b1275258.html) - **Time Out**, Phil de Semlyen (4/5): The review commends the film’s terrific gusto in capturing the absurdities of the true story and its perceptive anti-capitalist folk-tale qualities, with Skarsgård’s jittery, volatile lead performance singled out for praise alongside the period detail and soundtrack. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/dead-mans-wire-review-2025) - **Empire**, John Nugent (75/100, inferred): The critic finds it a tense, suspenseful no-nonsense thriller that keeps the heart rate up through its sweaty hostage standoff. The main strength is the straightforward tension and solid ensemble, though the characters feel thinly sketched compared to Van Sant's earlier work. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/dead-mans-wire/) - **Film Comment**, José Teodoro (75/100, inferred): The critic finds the film compelling in its restaging of a 1977 hostage crisis to explore class anxieties and institutional barriers. They single out the playful formal conceits like freeze-frames and the integration of peripheral characters and radio broadcasts into the narrative. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/partly-cloudy-tiff-2025-below-the-clouds-dead-mans-wire-review/) - **Vulture** (70/100, inferred): The film sticks to the facts of the 1977 true story while emphasizing its timeliness, with Skarsgård playing the disillusioned capitalist antihero with excitable, boyish humor. It excels in its stylistic claustrophobia and the central metaphor of two broken capitalists locked in a murderous standoff, though it is less successful when expanding beyond the two leads. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/article/dead-mans-wire-review-capitalism-wont-love-you-back.html) - **Slant Magazine**, Alexander Mooney (60/100, inferred): Van Sant cheekily toys with the eroticism of the hostage scenario in this breathlessly satirical thriller, delivering a memorably wonky take on the spectacles of crime and punishment with humanizing touches for its characters. It is sturdily directed but may leave one wishing Van Sant had complicated its true-crime spectacle a little more. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/dead-mans-wire-review-bill-skarsgard-gus-van-sant/) - **IndieWire**, Katie Rife (50/100, inferred): Bill Skarsgård stars as an aggrieved antihero who takes his mortgage broker hostage in a pleasingly punchy ’70s throwback that has sympathy for the kidnapper. The film struggles to maintain momentum overall. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/dead-mans-wire-review-gus-van-sant-1235148582/) - **The New York Times**, Ben Kenigsberg (45/100, inferred): The critic finds the film a low-energy 1970s-style crime drama that fails to capture the excitement of the real 1977 hostage incident it depicts. Van Sant evokes the period adequately with video footage and a '70s soundtrack, but the story lacks the craziness and liveliness it deserves. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/movies/dead-mans-wire-review.html) - **Financial Times**, Jonathan Romney (7): Van Sant's matter-of-fact take on the 1970s kidnapping excels at building tension and psychological insight, marking his most compelling film in years thanks to a strong cast and script. Skarsgård unnerves as the deluded Kiritsis while Montgomery makes the victim sympathetically bland. [Read](https://www.ft.com/content/19582157-1059-4249-a9d4-bf31030439aa) - **Screen Daily**: The critic describes the Venice premiere as an entertaining period drama with a light-footed screenplay and a cracking central performance from Skarsgård that captures a sympathetic yet troubling man, noting its moral grey areas and commercial potential. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/dead-mans-wire-review-bill-skarsgard-impresses-in-gus-van-sants-real-life-crime-caper/5208446.article) - **Sight and Sound**: The critic praises Van Sant’s nuanced dramatisation of the true 1977 hostage story as both jocular and baleful, nostalgic and timely, with strong performances from Skarsgård and Montgomery and a self-conscious evocation of the period’s media landscape. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/dead-mans-wire-bill-skarsgard-sticks-it-man-this-nuanced-period-thriller-from-gus-van-sant) - **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw: The critic praises the film's black-comic flair and unsentimentality in its take on the 1977 hostage incident, comparing it favorably to Dog Day Afternoon. Performances by Pacino, Domingo and Myha’la add surreal, hilarious elements to the gripping true-crime thriller. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/sep/02/dead-mans-wire-review-gus-van-sant-true-crime-thriller-al-pacino-colman-domingo-myhala-venice-film-festival) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, David Rooney: Gus Van Sant is in top form with this riveting true-crime dramatization of a 1977 hostage incident, paying tribute to Sidney Lumet’s ’70s thrillers while carving its own identity. Bill Skarsgard delivers a crackling performance full of unforced humor as the antihero, with the film’s understated approach letting sociopolitical themes emerge organically in a timely, entertaining reflection on the American Dream. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/dead-mans-wire-review-bill-skarsgard-gus-van-sant-1236358582/) - **The Observer**, Wendy Ide: Van Sant delivers a taut, no-frills thriller recreating the 1977 kidnapping with caustic humour and meticulous period detail, though it skimps slightly on characterisation. Skarsgård's jittery performance positions the protagonist between crackpot and folk hero. [Read](https://observer.co.uk/culture/film/article/wendy-ides-pick-of-other-films-dead-mans-wire-broken-english-arco-and-more) - **Collider**, David Caballero (8/10): The review praises the film as a welcome return for Van Sant, highlighting Bill Skarsgård's standout, empathetic yet unpredictable performance as the deluded hostage-taker Tony Kiritsis. It notes the film's topical condemnation of rigged institutions and capitalism but criticizes its small-scale approach that limits the story's full chaotic potential. [Read](https://collider.com/dead-mans-wire-review-bill-skarsgard-gus-van-sant-dacre-montgomery-al-pacino/) - **HeyUGuys**, Linda Marric (4/5): The critic calls it a tense, old-school crime thriller that keeps things simple and lets the story work, praising its grounded and gripping feel along with strong performances, especially from Bill Skarsgård. [Read](https://www.heyuguys.com/dead-mans-wire-review/) - **The Skinny**, Carmen Paddock (★★★★): The critic calls it an excellently constructed, taut nail-biter and slick 1970s throwback that pays homage to films like Dog Day Afternoon while remaining relevant. They praise the grounded and captivating lead performance by Bill Skarsgård as an everyman antihero, while noting some scenes do not fully pay off. [Read](https://www.theskinny.co.uk/film/new-releases/dead-mans-wire) - **The Playlist**, Marshall Shaffer (B): The critic finds it a breezily watchable 1970s-set hostage thriller with simple, familiar pleasures and a well-oiled machine direction, praising Skarsgård’s unpredictable performance while noting it does not go especially deep. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/dead-mans-wire-review-gus-van-sant-delivers-sturdy-simple-thrills-with-his-best-movie-in-years-venice-20250902/) - **Paste**, Andy Crump (C+): The critic finds the film a narrow but timely hostage drama that derives tension from its focus on the criminal folk hero, thanks especially to Skarsgård's taut performance. It praises the insightful portrait in Skarsgård's scenes but complains that the limited perspective hurts the overall story. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/gus-van-sant/dead-mans-wire-review) - **The Wrap** (50/100, inferred): The film is just OK as a movie despite the terrifying real-life story. Skarsgård's committed, chameleon-like performance as the chaotic lead is singled out as the standout element that keeps it engaging. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/dead-mans-wire-review-bill-skarsgard-gus-van-sant/) ## Details - **Director:** Gus Van Sant - **Director:** Gus Van Sant - **Writer:** Austin Kolodney - **Cinematography:** Arnaud Potier - **Editor:** Saar Klein - **Music:** Danny Elfman - **Production design:** Stefan Dechant - **Costume design:** Peggy Schnitzer - **Producer:** Cassian Elwes, Tom Culliver, Joel David Moore - **Cast:** Bill Skarsgård as Tony Kiritsis; Dacre Montgomery as Richard Hall; Cary Elwes as Michael Grable; Myha'la Herrold as Linda Page; Kelly Lynch as Mabel Hall; John Robinson as John; Vinh Nguyen as James- Young Radio Producer; Mark Helms as Frank Love - **Runtime:** 1h 46m - **Certificate (MPA):** R - **Release (the US):** 16 January 2026 - **Genres:** Crime, Drama, Thriller - **Budget:** $13 million - **Box office:** $2 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHAwgnJL78Y ## Where to watch in the US - Netflix: streaming - Amazon Prime Video: rent $5.99, uhd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $14.99, uhd *Checked 2026-09-10.* Also available in: AT, AU, BE, CA, DE, ES, FI, FR, GB, IT, NL, NO, NZ, PL, SE, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Dog Day Afternoon* (1975), Fi1m 90: The hostage film this one is measured against, with the crowd it lacks. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/dog-day-afternoon.md) - *Ace in the Hole* (1951), Fi1m 87: A trapped man, a reporter, and a town that turns the wait into a fair. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/ace-in-the-hole.md) - *Stockholm* (2018): Another real siege played for nerves and awkward laughs, with a captor who wants company. - *Money Monster* (2016): A man with a gun and a grievance about money, this time on live television. - *Elephant* (2003), Fi1m 84: Van Sant walking slowly towards violence, with none of this film’s jokes to soften it. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-elephant-man.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/dead-mans-wire