Tag Archives: 2026

Reel Views, Review

Dead Man’s Wire

Those who have lived in Indiana long enough likely know the story of Tony Kiritsis. In February 1977, the Indianapolis resident walked into a mortgage office with a concealed shotgun and held a broker hostage after falling behind on payments for a piece of undeveloped real estate. The heavily publicized events were the subject of the 2018 documentary Dead Man’s Line and now we have the fictionalized version in the form of Gus Van Sant’s Dead Man’s Wire. It follows a spate of recent biopics like The Smashing Machine and Song Sung Blue, whose respective documentaries haven’t been readily available on streaming, thus leaving the opportunity for filmmakers to deliver their own adaptations. But all these iterations face the age-old test of whether or not they actually expand on the original text in a meaningful way, which this movie doesn’t pass.

In the film, Kiritsis is played by Bill Skarsgård, taking a step out of the supernatural realm after his recent stints in The Crow, Nosferatu and It: Welcome To Derry. Tony’s hostage plan immediately hits a roadblock when he arrives at the offices of Meridian Mortgage to find that M.L. Hall (Al Pacino), the bank’s owner and Kiritsis’ intended target, is on vacation. Instead, his son Dick (Dacre Montgomery) greets Tony in the lobby and offers to take the meeting in his dad’s place, not knowing the sinister turn that it would take. Once in Dick’s office, Tony holds him up at gunpoint and fashions a wire around Dick’s neck connected to the trigger of his shotgun, making for a particularly volatile standoff situation. Shortly after, the pair make their way to the streets and head for Tony’s apartment, as police officers and news media quickly register the crisis as it unfolds.

Even though Tony Kiritsis was a real person, Gus Van Sant’s character is clearly meant to share a kinship with disaffected and desperate protagonists of gritty 1970s crime sagas like Taxi Driver and Dog Day Afternoon. Along with the social consciousness of those films, Dead Man’s Wire is also of a piece with 1976’s Network, whose infamous “mad as hell” line is partially quoted by a cop trying to surmise Kiritsis’ state of mind. These era-defining thrillers are strong sources of inspiration upon which to reconsider this bizarre kidnapping, but Van Sant simply can’t compete with what Sidney Lumet and Martin Scorsese were cooking 50 years ago. Perhaps it’s not fair to compare him with two of the greatest filmmakers America has produced but when the influences are this obvious, it’s not difficult to find Dead Man’s Wire comparatively lacking in tact and tension.

Stylistically, Van Sant does what he can to mimic the mise-en-scène of the masters’ mid-70s movies, with cinematographer Arnaud Potier using refurbished broadcast cameras to emulate the grain-laden aesthetic of the time period. The set decoration and costume design are all on point, while the soundtrack is comprised of radio hits like “Love To Love You Baby” and “Your Move”; “Cannock Chase” pops up again after also being used brilliantly in Sentimental Value recently. The song choices are framed as being those of local DJ Fred Temple, played by Colman Domingo, whose smooth segues are often heard in voiceover. For some reason, Kiritsis has a god-like adoration of Temple and insists on talking to him during the standoff for comfort and consultation. Domingo certainly fits in the role and appears in the film a substantial amount but Van Sant doesn’t go much further into how this parasocial bond of Kiritsis’ became so strong.

Besides Tony and Dick, all of the other characters pushed out to the periphery don’t fare much better with their limited screen time. Cary Elwes barely registers as the constantly consternated cop who first gets called to the scene, while rising star Myha’la doesn’t make much of an impression as a TV reporter trying to chase the career-making story. Al Pacino, who I’m assuming was cast primarily due to his Dog Day Afternoon connection, literally phones it in with an aggressive Southern accent in a couple scenes. I suppose I can’t blame him for trying something because Gus Van Sant struggles throughout Dead Man’s Wire to make these real-life events interesting. In past films like To Die For and Milk, he’s covered this thematic material and this era much more evocatively before in his career. Between this, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot and The Sea Of Trees, it feels like a once great filmmaker is lost in the forest.

Score – 2/5

More new movies coming this weekend:
Arriving in theaters is 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, a horror sequel starring Ralph Fiennes and Jack O’Connell, continuing the tale of a teenage survivor from the zombie apocalypse as he joins a gang co-led by a ruthless gang member and a boundary-pushing doctor.
Also landing in theaters is Charlie The Wonderdog, an animated adventure starring Owen Wilson and Tabitha St. Germain, in which a dog gains superpowers after his owner is abducted by aliens and together, they battle an evil cat threatening humanity.
Premiering on Netflix is The Rip, an action thriller starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, following a group of Miami cops as they discover a stash of millions in cash, which leads to distrust from outsiders as they learn about the huge seizure.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

We Bury The Dead

Somehow, zombies returned. Since hanging up the lightsaber — for now, anyway — in 2019’s Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, Daisy Ridley has covered an admirable amount of genres across smaller projects and with We Bury The Dead, survival horror seemed to be next on the list. Along with the 28 Years Later franchise, which has another entry out later this month and a trilogy capper due out next year, zombie films may have looked dead there for a moment but they’re back up and running now. In the case of We Bury The Dead, the latest from Australian director and writer Zak Hilditch, the walking dead function more as a backdrop upon which the survivors deal with the unresolved issues they have with those they lost. As such, the film is a bit too pensive and self-conscious for its own good but has enough worthwhile elements to make it a decent change of pace within the horror subgenre.

Ridley stars as Ava Newman, a physical therapist based in the US who travels to Tasmania in search of her husband Mitch (Matt Whelan) after an EMP weapon accidentally detonates and leaves tens of thousands on the island affected. It’s bad enough that the majority of the victims are dead but somehow even worse, some have awakened in a zombified state and attacked members of the rescue effort. This makes Ava’s job in the body retrieval unit more dangerous than it typically would be, although fellow volunteer Clay (Brenton Thwaites) doesn’t seem nearly as bothered by the state of things. Blithely lighting up a cigarette as he exits a corpse-infested house behind an upchucking teammate, Clay registers to Ava as a cooler head who will help her prevail through this tragedy. After the pair get acquainted and discover a motorcycle during one of their assignments, they plan to head south and look for Mitch.

In most zombie movies, the detours these two might encounter as they zoom down military-surveilled highways would involve gory run-ins with the undead but We Bury The Dead intentionally focuses on the humans that can still be just as dangerous. One such impediment, a soldier named Riley played by Mark Coles Smith, has a particularly creepy way to express his grief about losing his pregnant wife to the experimental explosion. Similarly, Hilditch treats us to flashbacks to Ava and Mitch stateside before the latter travelled down under for an ill-fated work trip, depicting a marriage that was already against the ropes before the accident in Australia. It’s an open question through most of the film how Ava will cope if she finds Mitch alive and unaffected by the zombie-like symptoms from the blast, as unlikely as that scenario might be.

Given the obviously heavy subject material, I appreciated Zak Hilditch’s attempts to dissipate the somber mood with tension-breaking moments of reckless relief or cheeky defiance. The groovy drum shuffle of “Vitamin C” by Can always hits the spot for the former and the latter is brought to the forefront nicely, thanks to a cut from raucous Aussie punk rockers Amyl And The Sniffers. A PJ Harvey track from Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea also scores a rare tender scene that still percolates with unease and the threat of violence. The stellar music moments stand out in a movie that’s a little too light on incident and oddly self-conscious about being a zombie flick. It’s clear Hilditch is trying to sidestep the rote horror beats we’d expect but too often, he substitutes them with moments that should fill us with dread but feel too sedate to register salient amounts of fear.

As with other decent indies like The Marsh King’s Daughter and Sometimes I Think About Dying that Daisy Ridley has starred in since her Rey-cation, her performance in We Bury The Dead is one of its strongest selling points. She’s an actress who simply does an outstanding job portraying introverts on-screen, suggesting genuine inner worlds within each of her characters that effortlessly draw us into these stories. Here, Ava has the determination and intellect we’ve seen Ridley convey with her heroines before but the scenes with Mitch showcase marital vulnerability that give us a deeper glimpse into Ava’s headspace. I applaud Ridley’s effort to pursue smaller projects, and likely help get them made with her name attached, but I also wish she’d hold out for scripts that are truly next level. She’s had quite a few base hits but she really deserves a home run.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Primate, a natural horror film starring Johnny Sequoyah and Jessica Alexander, in which a tropical vacation goes awry when a family’s adopted chimpanzee is bitten by a rabid animal and suddenly becomes violent.
Also playing only in theaters is Greenland 2: Migration, a survival disaster thriller starring Gerard Butler and Morena Baccarin, following a family who must leave the safety of their apocalypse bunker and embark on a perilous journey across the wasteland of Europe to find a new home.
Streaming on Netflix is People We Meet On Vacation, a romantic comedy starring Emily Bader and Tom Blyth, following a a free-spirited travel writer and and a a reserved teacher who reunite for one last trip to mend their friendship and confront their unspoken romantic feelings.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup