Gus Van Sant has been away from the big screen for seven years. His return, a biographical crime thriller called Dead Man's Wire, opened in limited release in 2025, expanded to more theaters earlier this year, and is now streaming on Netflix.
According to a report by Collider, the film follows Tony Kiritsis, played by Bill Skarsgård, a developer who takes the president of the Meridian Mortgage Company hostage in the winter of 1977. Kiritsis attaches a sawed-off shotgun to his hostage, Richard Hall, played by Dacre Montgomery, with a wire rigged to pull the trigger if Hall tries to escape. What follows is a standoff with authorities, a legal dispute over land profits, and a media frenzy.
Al Pacino plays M.L. Hall, the father of the hostage and president of the mortgage company. Collider notes the casting is a knowing nod to Dog Day Afternoon, Sidney Lumet's 1975 heist drama, which the film draws clear comparisons to. Both are based on true events in New York City in the 1970s, though Dead Man's Wire centers on a hostage crisis rather than a bank robbery.
Van Sant is best known for films like My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting, and Milk. Dead Man's Wire pulls him back toward his earlier work in anarchic indie crime, the territory he explored with Drugstore Cowboy and To Die For. The shift may surprise some viewers who associate him only with his more sensitive dramas, but the material suits him.
Skarsgård built his reputation as a horror performer, playing Pennywise the Clown in Andy Muschietti's IT and its HBO follow-up series IT: Welcome to Derry, a Barbarian villain in Zach Cregger's film, and the title role in Robert Eggers' Nosferatu. Dead Man's Wire pushes him into dramatic territory. Collider describes his performance as one built on physical restraint, calling Tony Kiritsis a "ticking time bomb." The review notes the performance carries "a darkly humorous edge and aura of pathos" and that Skarsgård makes the audience feel sympathetic for a man who has psychologically snapped.
Montgomery, best known as Billy Hargrove in Stranger Things, plays the hostage Richard Hall. His character begins the film with a privileged, corporate demeanor that makes audiences skeptical of him, before the circumstances of the hostage crisis complicate that initial impression.
The film arrives on Netflix without much prior mainstream attention. It played in limited release and expanded slowly before landing on the platform. Collider argues it is overdue for a wider audience now that it is available for general streaming.
