Dead Man's Wire

AroView: A hostage thriller based on a real incident in 1977 that is both gripping and darkly amusing in the hands of director Gus Van Sant. Centred around two dynamic performances, Bill Skarsgård plays the lone gunman while Dacre Montgomery is equally nervy as the mortgage company president at his mercy after the failure of a real estate deal.

With hair-trigger tension, the two men push and pull our sympathy – from opposite sides of the American dream – between violent victimhood and our most morbid, highly topical fantasies about holding power-brokers to account. Then there’s the bonus of seeing Al Pacino literally phone it in as a ruthless patriarch, and Colman Domingo playing it super cool as a local disc jockey.

“Dead Man’s Wire is a timely, entertaining reflection on the way the offer of the American Dream often tends to be snatched back.” ~David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

“Director Gus Van Sant turns this fascinating true crime story into both an entertaining period drama and an evergreen tale of ordinary men pushed into desperate acts.” ~Nikki Baughan, Screen Daily

“The personae and performances of Pacino, Domingo and Myha’la complicate the psychopathic nastiness of the affair, and create something surreal and bizarre and often hilarious…” ~Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian