‘Dead Man’s Wire’ Review – Gus Van Sant’s Big Screen Return [TIFF 2025]

Legendary director Alfred Hitchcock made “The Bomb Theory” famous. The theory, in short, discusses the difference between surprise and suspense in relation to when a screenwriter lets the audience know that there is a bomb under the table in a scene. No warning brings surprise, but showing the bomb a few minutes before it goes off allows for suspense to build and the conversation to be more urgent. It dials in the viewer unlike anything else.

After seven long years since his last feature, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot (2018), Gus Van Sant returns to stretch Hitchcock’s analogy to the absolute limit in Dead Man’s Wire. The film follows the real-life story of Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgard), an Indianapolis man who in 1977 marched into his bank and took the bank manager, Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery), hostage after a mortgage and property dispute. His method of kidnapping? Tying a wire around Hall’s neck that was linked to the trigger of a sawed-off shotgun. If anything were to happen to Kuritsis, the gun would go off. How’s that for suspense?

Despite the straightforward, ripped from the newspapers story, Van Sant manages to mine a solid 105 well-earned minutes exploring both the specifics of Kuritsis’s delusion and how easy it can seem that everyone’s out to get us. It doesn’t take much going wrong in your life for you to start being suspicious of everyone around you, with those folks scheming behind your back for everything you’ve got. Van Sant captures this paranoia perfectly through Kiritsis, eerily similar to things we see in today’s socio-political climate. 

All the performances are stellar, but Skarsgard is on another level. Each time he appears in something new, he offers up a different version of himself rather than sticking to tried and true character stereotypes. His ability to be creepy and unhinged in a variety of genres is unmatched, reinventing himself in movies like It (2017), Nosferatu (2024), and Barbarian (2022). There’s an obvious throughline in these characters, but each one is distinct and shows off a full range of acting talent. Dead Man’s Wire allows Skarsgard to be boisterous and over-the-top, as if parts of Pennywise the Clown were infused into a real person. His electric performance, combined with the natural suspense brought on by the situation, makes for a fun viewing experience. 

The film’s costume and production design departments are firing on all cylinders, painting a portrait of a time that I sometimes wish we could go back to. Obviously, not everything was right in the world in the 70s, but there was such a sense of community that’s synonymous with phones with cords, bulkier cars, and suits being the standard of daily menswear. People knew who you were, even in cities as big as Indianapolis. 

Even though people knew who Tony was, he didn’t feel seen. He felt taken advantage of, looked over. After he takes Hall hostage, Kiritsis calls his favorite radio host, Fred Temple (Colman Domingo), seeking a listening ear and connection. Temple teeters between empathy and thinking he’s crazy, and decides to broadcast his conversations to keep him at bay. Throughout the film, this relationship with Temple is just about the only thing that calms Kiritsis down. Domingo makes the most of his limited screentime and proves to be the only person who shows much care towards Tony. 

Dead Man’s Wire is a solid return to the big screen for Gus Van Sant, with a stellar recreation of the 70s and an amazing performance from Bill Skarsgard. The film doesn’t elevate much past an entertaining dramatization of a real-life event, but it’s perfect for what it’s trying to be. Even a fairly specific situation like this can hold up a mirror to things happening today on a much grander scale.

Dead Man’s Wire held its North American Premiere as part of the Special Presentations section at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.

Director: Gus Van Sant

Screenwriter: Austin Kolodney

Rated: NR

Runtime: 104m