“Sentimental Value” star Stellan Skarsgård isn’t the only member of the Swedish family vying for awards this year. His son Alexander stars in the queer BDSM romance “Pillion,” up for 10 British Independent Film Awards, and his other son Bill stars in Gus Van Sant‘s first feature in seven years, “Dead Man’s Wire.”
The Venice and Toronto International Film Festival premiere is one of the flagship releases from rookie distributor Row K Entertainment, and it’s based on the true story of conspiracist Tony Kiritsis. In 1977, he entered the Indianapolis offices of the Meridian Mortgage Company with a sawed-off shotgun to hold its president (Dacre Montgomery) hostage, alleging the corporate bigwig fucked him over on mortgage payments.
Watch the trailer for “Dead Man’s Wire” below. The film receives an awards-qualifying run on December 12, followed by a limited release January 9, and wide release the following week on January 16.
Penned by first-time feature screenwriter Austin Kolodney, “Dead Man’s Wire” also stars Cary Elwes, Myha’la, Colman Domingo, and even Al Pacino in a brief role appropriate for the fact that this hostage-style thriller recalls Pacino’s own “Dog Day Afternoon.”
The ripped-from-the-headlines story in “Dead Man’s Wire” also brings to mind recent news breaks that have turned assassins fighting for the working class into folk heroes — like Luigi Mangione, accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024.
That mythologizing of vigilantes into folk heroes and internet crusaders is “kind of a new thing for today’s generation,” Gus Van Sant told IndieWire ahead of Venice. “[There are] extreme reactions to certain things, that I’m not necessarily able to understand, in generations. That happened after we had scheduled the film; it was in [December], the Mangione shooting, and we had started just before that in September, and we were moving to Louisville, Kentucky, where we were shooting. We realized we were making something that had a similarity to it. I was having this discussion with almost everyone my age of the acceptance of that particular Mangione incident and who the health company CEO was, and the person I was talking to had friends that knew [the CEO].”
We’re used to seeing Bill Skarsgård in extreme costume and makeup, whether starring in “Nosferatu” or as the killer clown in the “It” films, but “Dead Man’s Wire” gives the actor a chance to shine in a more stripped-down dramatic role as a mortal human being.
From IndieWire’s review: “One does not hire Bill Skarsgård unless one is looking for a lanky, off-putting weirdo. But Skarsgård does a good job of making his character’s frustration and rising panic grounded and relatable. This helps immensely when we get to the finale, which complicates the us-vs-them narrative. Ultimately, ‘Dead Man’s Wire’ concedes that Kiritsis’ violent actions had more negative effects than positive ones. But the man still had a point.”
Watch the trailer below.