Movie · 2026 · Crime, Drama, Thriller · 1h 45m · R · English
Curator score: 4.8/10 (83.6K ratings)
His revolution was televised.
Overview
In 1977, former real estate developer Tony Kiritsis puts a dead man's switch on himself and the mortgage banker who did him wrong, demanding $5 million and a personal apology.
Ratings
Curator score: 4.8/10
IMDb: 6.5/10
Letterboxd: 3.41/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 92%
Metacritic: 68
TMDB: 6.5/10
Director
Gus Van Sant
Production
Elevated Films, Balcony 9 Productions, RNA Pictures, TPC, Sobini Films, Co Created Media
Cast
Bill Skarsgård, Dacre Montgomery, Cary Elwes, Myha'la, Colman Domingo, Al Pacino, Kelly Lynch, Jordan Claire Robbins, John Robinson, Katie Kinman, Mark Helms, Kyle Rankin, Vinh Nguyen, Stephanie Bertoni, Danielle Munday, Daniel R. Hill, Todd Gable, Neil Mulac, John N. Dixon, Andy S. Allen
Where to watch
Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Curator Review
Verdict
A tense, darkly funny hostage thriller with a strong 1970s texture and a sharp anti-corporate edge. It sounds especially appealing if you like true-crime-adjacent dramas that are more character study and social rage than procedural mechanics.
Best for
fans of 1970s-set crime dramas
viewers who like hostage thrillers with moral ambiguity
people drawn to anti-corporate or anti-establishment stories
fans of Gus Van Sant’s restrained, observational style
audiences who enjoy performance-driven tension
Skip if
you want a clean, conventional thriller
you prefer fast-paced action over simmering dread
you dislike morally messy protagonists
you are looking for a straightforward police-procedural structure
Overview
Dead Man’s Wire looks like the kind of grimly comic American pressure-cooker that turns a real-life outrage into a study of humiliation, spectacle, and class resentment. The premise is outrageous on its own, but the appeal here is less the mechanics of the standoff than the social rot underneath it: debt, grievance, media attention, and a man who decides to make his pain public.
Worth noting
The Letterboxd response suggests a film that plays with dark humor as much as suspense, with a strong sense of period detail and a lead performance built on exhaustion, volatility, and desperate charisma. Gus Van Sant seems like a good fit for material that can stay cool and observant while still letting the absurdity and menace build.
Bottom line
This should land best for viewers who like their thrillers to feel bruised, ironic, and politically charged. It may not satisfy if you want a tightly engineered genre machine, but if the film fully commits to its bitterness and bite, it could be one of those uneasy crowd-pleasers that leaves you laughing, then immediately feeling bad about it.
Top Letterboxd reviews
florence 💌 (4.5★) · 3219 likes
when the credits say that the mortgage company got bankrupt and the whole room clapped<3
Ali (4★) · 2982 likes
waluigi mangione
Jack Moulton (4★) · 2628 likes
Bill Skarsgård was born to play a guy who’s been up for three days straight.
Emmy (4★) · 1995 likes
I think Colman Domingo’s 70s DJ voice got me pregnant
1998 · Crime, Drama, Thriller · 2h 1m · R · Curator 8.0/10 (147.9K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, MGM Plus, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
A bleak, escalating crime story about money, panic, and the collapse of moral control.
1982 · Drama, Comedy · 1h 49m · PG · Curator 8.9/10 (521.1K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
A darkly comic look at humiliation, delusion, and the hunger to force the world to notice you.
Topics
crime thriller, 1970s setting, hostage drama, dark comedy, social satire, true crime, class conflict, period piece, psychological tension, anti-establishment