The Milk and Good Will Hunting director\u2019s new film is about \u2018a little guy\u2019 taking violent revenge against the system. He talks about the parallels between Dead Man\u2019s Wire and the homicide case currently dividing Gen Z and boomers<\/p>\n
In February 1977, a middle-aged Indianapolis businessman named Tony Kiritsis took hostage an employee at his local mortgage brokers, who he was convinced had cheated him out of the profits of a piece of real estate. The system was weighted against the little guy, Kiritsis decided, and he was going to be the one to make it pay. He attached one end of a wire to the trigger of a shotgun, the other to the hostage\u2019s head, and demanded $5m and an admission of guilt from the brokers\u2019 boss. The final moments of the standoff, which lasted 63 hours, were broadcast live on TV.<\/p>\n
It has already been the subject of a 2018 documentary (Dead Man\u2019s Line) and a 2022 thriller podcast (American Hostage) which starred Jon Hamm as the DJ who broadcast an interview with Kiritsis live from the crime scene. Now Gus Van Sant, whose 40-year-plus career incorporates queer landmarks (My Own Private Idaho, Milk), mainstream crowdpleasers (Good Will Hunting) and arthouse award-winners (the Columbine-inspired Elephant), is dramatising the events in Dead Man\u2019s Wire. This wry thriller cuts between the volatile captor (Bill Skarsg\u00e5rd) and the media circus swirling around him, which includes the DJ, played here by Colman Domingo, and a female TV journalist (Myha\u2019la) fed up with being fobbed off. Al Pacino has a cameo as the boss of the mortgage company, sunning himself in Malibu and unconvinced he has anything much to apologise for.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/e77e322c26cbdc87d86f460f91ce7cba3b27c09e\/765_276_1197_958\/master\/1197.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=de0f69f60f63982d5faee9b592e68bfa\" "\\"Gus")
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