Le Monde’s verdict – Must see
Ordinary men and women on the street. Dead Man’s Wire, Gus Van Sant’s latest feature film, opens with a few words from radio host Fred Temple (Colman Domingo) describing “primly dressed secretaries” and “weary window washers.” On this cold morning, as he observes those around him, he says he comes across a card depicting a joker.
Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård), the film’s main character, is a bit of both – a man of the people and an antihero consumed by revenge. Dead Man’s Wire finds a playful way to tell the story of a striking true crime that took place in February 1977, by masterfully shifting between two perspectives: one straightforward, the other slightly oblique, sometimes inside, sometimes outside.
That morning, Kiritsis heads to the offices of Meridian Mortgage Company, a loan company he suspects of having swindled him. The company, which was supposed to build a shopping center on land he purchased with a mortgage loan, has abandoned the project. Did the broker pressure Tony into bankruptcy to reclaim the property? That’s what the heavily indebted man believes, and he refuses to let it go unchallenged.
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