"With terrific chutzpah, black-comic flair and cool, cruel unsentimentality, screenwriter Austin Kolodney and director Gus Van Sant have made a true-crime suspense thriller set in the 1970s, tapping into the spirit of both Sidney Lumet’s DOG DAY AFTERNOON and NETWORK." -Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
"Skarsgård is a treat as the deranged, desperate Kiritsis." -Phil de Semlyen, Time Out
"A memorably wonky take on the real-time and retrospective spectacles we make of crime and punishment." -Alexander Mooney, Slant
Monday, December 15, 6:00 p.m. | Gripping and bleakly comic, DEAD MAN'S WIRE is an absurdist recreation of a 1977 real-life hostage taking. Bill Skarsgård deftly plays the desperate Tony Kritis, an Indianapolis man on the precipice of financial ruin. He attacks his mortgage lender, Richard O'Hall portrayed by Darce Montgomery, and holds him by wiring the trigger of a sawed-off shotgun to the back of his head. Things degrade from there over the next sixty-three hours as the incident becomes national news. Timely and funny, this tale of class tension and vigilante justice also features scene-stealing performances by Coleman Domingo and Al Pacino.
Free for Siskel Film Center Members!
Limited capacity. Tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis.
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The Film Center is ADA accessible. This presentation will be projected without open captions. The theater is hearing-loop equipped. For accessibility requests, please email filmcenter@saic.edu