“Dead Man’s Wire” is a daunting film because of its dark subject matter and uneasy resolution. Based on a true story and the title tells the means by which a man kept a hostage in line and the police at bay. He had wired his gun so that if the hostage moved, he would be shot. If the hostage taker was shot, his hostage would be shot with that gun. The standoff ended after 63 hours.

Directed by Gus Van Sant and written by Austin Kolodney, the film is based on the 2018 documentary, “Dead Man’s Line” by Alan Berry and Mark Enochs on the same 1977 event in Indianapolis. Berry and Enochs served as consultants. The full documentary is available to stream online.

Dead Man’s Line: The True Story of Tony Kiritsis ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The kidnapper, Anthony “Tony” Kiritsis passed away in 2005 at the age of 72.  At the time of the incident, Kiritsis was 44. He had fallen behind in mortgage payments and somehow became convinced that his mortgage broker, Richard O. Hall and Hall’s father wanted the property because the property’s value had increased and could be sold for profit.

The documentary’s most touching part is the inclusion of Tony Kiritsis’ brother, Jimmie who was flown in by helicopter.

The real DJ, Fred Heckman (11 November 1923 – 28 May 2001), was White. You can see him in a photograph on this article. Heckman was not a DJ, but a newsman. He came to WIBC-AM in 1957 after serving in the US Coast Guard during World War II and the US Naval Reserve during the Korean War as a radioman. He was the senior news analyst and news director at the station and did radio essay segments, “My Town Indy.”

You can hear the recordings of real Heckman speaking with Kiritsis  in this documentary. At the end, post credits, you can hear what Heckman felt were the consequences of his involvement as well as other journalists discussing the repercussions of media coverage.

There are things worth considering in today’s world, where the Internet and cellphones have changed how news is presented.

Dead Man’s Wire ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The film begins just after a cigarette parts from the lips of the speaker and smoke escapes his lips.

I was walking into the overpass as primly dressed secretaries and weary window washers  march onwards and upwards to start their days. The cold winter wind whipped my face. A card caught my eye. I flipped it over to find joker, joker, joker.

All things in life are really here to stay: The good and the bad. So worry not for me. I smile at the cards I’ve dealt.

The soothing voice belongs to a fictional DJ, Fred Temple (Colman Domingo), at Deodata.  While we’ve glimpsed at a secretary leaving a bus, we’ll see both more secretaries and window washers. During Temple’s monologue, we’ve begun following a nervous man, Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård), is driving and when he gets out and enters a large office building with his left arm in a cast, it looks like he’s there to deliver something as he’s carrying a long box.

Tony has an appointment with M.L. Hall (Al Pacino). There’s a new secretary at reception for Meridian Mortgage Company who tells him the senior Hall has left for a sudden business trip. We see that he’s really relaxing on a vacation with his wife, testing the patience of the waiter who has just served his breakfast burrito.

Instead, Tony gets the son, Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery). While the senior Hall seems a bit self-important, Richard seems genial and patient. He knows why Tony is there, or at least, he thinks he does. When Richard turns his back, Tony gets out a gun and begins to set up the Dead Man’s wire.

Tony calls the police and describes the situation, calling the mortgage company, a loan company and the biggest devil.

In Austin Kolodney’s script, small things go wrong for Tony. First, he has no way of leaving because his key broke in his car. Instead of taking his car, Tony has to walk with Richard to Richard’s car, exposing him to scrutiny because how often do you see a man strolling down the sidewalk with a gun wired to another man’s head?

Along the way, Detective Michael Grable (Cary Elwes) stops him, trying to de-escalate the situation. Grable knows Tony because Tony frequents a cop bar.  Other police join them. A car has an accident, distracted by the scene. An anxious Tony confiscates a cop car and drives away. A young reporter, Linda Page (Myha’la) and John the Camera Man (John Robinson), are soon on the scene, hoping this will be their big break to better stories.

The police follow the stolen police car back to Tony’s apartment complex.

“I love Fred Temples; I love his takes,” Tony explains.

What follows is a mess between Tony and competing interests outside, but the direction and story telling keep this under control into a comprehensible test of wills. Both Tony and Richard are sympathetically portrayed. While Tony’s brother, Jimmy Kiritsis (Daniel R. Hill), does appear here, he has a lesser presence than in the documentary.

Cinematographer mixes the warm colors of the current day with glimpses of black-and-white snapshots and segments of grainy color video. A lot of credit goes to the editing  by Saar Klein to bring us several levels of reality. Director Gus Van Sant (“Good Will Hunting,” 1997,  and “My Own Private Idaho,” 1991) also keeps everything seamlessly integrated and the performances well-balanced and nuanced.

Bill Skarsgård gives a masterful performance of a desperate man who may or may not be crazy. He’s most certainly paranoid, but not to the extent that you’d immediately recognize him as crazy. That’s important because of the legal ramifications of this case. The film also hints at the emotional ramifications as we see the younger Hall much later under less fortunate circumstances, judging from his attire.

You might not recognize the guy with the thin nasal voice in the dark orange turtleneck sweater and brown leather jacket. That’s the same guy that played Westley in “Princess Bride.”

While I enjoy the soothing voice of Domingo Coleman and the way the script brings in the sounds, color and fashions of the 1970s through Coleman’s DJ character, his inclusion obscures the racism prevalent in Indianapolis of that time period.

Although I have never been to Indianapolis, I had a feeling that things were not so easy-going in terms of race. Looking into things I wasn’t wrong.

According to the IndyStar, there was an influx of Black people during the late 1930s into the 1940s  as part of the Great Migration of African Americans fleeing the racial violence of the South.

Redlining, which systematically denied Black people the necessary loans and mortgages to live in certain neighborhoods, perpetuated the changing demographic of the city along with segregation. Discriminatory divisions amongst Indianapolis residents continued to grow, despite the Fair Housing Act of 1968, Mullins said.

The racial demographics of the time according to the IndyStar article was predominately White.

1970 census

Total Population: 746,302

Race:

• White: 607,902, 81.64%
• Negro: 134,203, 18.02%

The demographics were changing:

1980 census

Total population: 700,807

Race:

• White: 540,294, 77.10%
• Black: 152,626, 21.78%
• American Indian, Eskimo, or Aleut: 994, 0.14%
• Asian or Pacific Islander: 3,792, 0.54%
• Other race: 3,101, 0.44%

The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis notes there was displacement and racial conflict in the 1960s-1970s.

During the late 1960s, a massive urban renewal program and construction of the interstate highway system displaced many Black-owned businesses and homes near downtown. These events disrupted much of the traditional economic activity in the Black community of Indianapolis. Moreover, the decline of residential segregation that began in the 1970s and the increased integration of the Black middle class resulted in a dispersal of African American purchasing power. Although it mirrored a national trend, Indianapolis Blacks no longer existed in a tight-knit business community that encouraged economic strength. This change at times led to racial conflicts, such as in 1993 when the local Black Panther militia boycotted a Korean merchant’s beauty supply store in a predominantly Black neighborhood.

On specific Black neighborhood was lost as a result of Indiana University’s expansion according to MirrorIndy:

Decades ago, Indiana Avenue was the center of Black cultural and economic life in the city. Known as Indianapolis’ Black Wall Street, the bustling corridor was surrounded by a predominantly Black neighborhood and bolstered by the Madam Walker Theatre and jazz clubs.

Today, though, the area surrounding the Avenue is largely a collection of sprawling lawns, concrete plazas and gargantuan buildings for what’s now IU Indianapolis and Purdue in Indianapolis. The only reminders of the once thriving Black neighborhood on the campuses are a few historical markers.

Including a Black actor as the trusted voice of a paranoid man bends the reality that was the 1970s in Indianapolis. It also does a disservice to the actual radio person who considered himself a newsman, Heckman. It also lessens the impact of having a Black female reporter struggling to get a good story, Myha’la’s Linda page. We then see it as her problem is primarily that she’s female and not that she’s Black and then because she’s female.

In 1977, a Black female TV news reporter would not be a first. The first Black female TV news reporter and anchor  in Indianapolis and Indiana was Barbara Boyd who worked at WRTV from 1969 to 1994.

“Dead Man’s Wire” was screened at AFI FEST and will be released theatrically on 9 January 2026 and then move to a wider release on 16 January 2026. .