Before I say anything else about Gus Van Sant’s new film, I feel that I should make something clear.

I am a huge Al Pacino fan.  My love for the Godfather films (even the third one!) should be obvious to anyone who regularly reads this site.  I love the majority of Pacino’s work, even the roles that occurred after he started bellowing all of his lines.  I think his cop in Heat is one of the most entertaining characters to ever appear in a crime film.  I loved his performance as Jimmy Hoffa in The Irishman.  I enjoyed the humor that he brought to his role in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.  I will always be happy to defend Al Pacino.

So, it gives me no pleasure to say that Al Pacino gives one of his worst performances in this film.  He plays M.L. Hall, the owner of Meridian Mortgage Company in Indianapolis, Indiana.  Pacino only appears in three brief scenes.  Wearing a ridiculous wig, he delivers his lines in one of the worst Southern accents that I’ve ever heard.  Playing a businessman who is so heartless that he won’t even negotiate with the man who is holding his son hostage, Pacino gives a performance that isn’t even entertaining enough to be considered cartoonish.  It’s the type of performance that one might expect from the villain-of-the-week on a particularly heavy-handed episode of Law & Order.  It’s not the type of performance that you would expect from Al Pacino.

Fortunately, despite all of that, Dead Man’s Wire is still a fairly compelling film.

Based on a true story, Dead Man’s Wire stars Bill Skarsgard as Tony Kiritsis, a real estate developer in 1970s Indianapolis who feels that Meridian Mortgage Company has cheated him out of the money that he hoped to earn through some land he developed.  Because M.L. Hall is on vacation in Florida, Tony takes M.L. son, Richard (Dacre Montgomery), hostage.  Tony wires a shotgun to Richard’s neck so that any sudden movement by either one of them will lead to Richard getting his head blown off.  Tony announced that he’ll only release Richard in return for immunity and an apology from M.L. Hall.

For three days, the city of Indianapolis watches as the situation plays out.  Detective Michael Gable (Cary Elwes) tries to negotiate with Tony but Tony is only willing to talk to the DJ (Colman Domingo) at his favorite radio station.  Meanwhile, Tony picks up some support from other people who feel that they’ve been screwed over by the M.L. Halls of the world.

Indeed, while watching this movie, it was hard not to think about the creepy cult that has sprung up around Luigi Mangione.  Of course, being a blue collar guy who appears to have simply been pushed past his breaking point, Tony is a much more compelling figure than a phony intellectual like Luigi.  That said, director Gus Van Sant is more interested in Tony as an outsider on the fringes of polite society than as a political symbol.  Skarsgard plays Tony as a man who can go from being friendly to enraged in a matter of seconds and he’s actually quite frightening in the role.  Meanwhile, Dacre Montgomery makes Richard into a rather sympathetic character.  Even if you don’t agree with the actions of his father, it’s hard not to respect the way that Richard handles the situation.  Watching this film, one gets the feeling that the unstable Tony thinks that he and Richard are developing a common ground but in reality, there’s no way that anyone could expect Richard to sympathize with a man who held him hostage for three days.  The film respects the characters and the actors too much for that type of false sentimentality.

Towards the end of the film, there’s a rather odd moment where breaking news about the hostage situation interrupts John Wayne presenting the award for Best Picture at the Oscars.  In reality, the 1977 Academy Awards were held a month after the hostage situation had been resolved and the ceremony seen in Dead Man’s Wire was held in 1979.  (Wayne presented the Oscar just a few months before his own death from cancer.)  It’s  classic Van Sant move in that it seems like it should mean something but, in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn’t.  Van Sant is one of those directors who has been around long enough and who has made enough interesting films that he can get away with something like that.

Dead Man’s Wire is Van Sant’s first film in seven years and his best film since Elephant.  It’s flawed but always watchable and it has a sense of humor and enough odd but memorable details to balance out the film’s angrier moments.  There are a few moments where the film falls into the trendy and intellectually shallow anti-capitalism that is all the rage nowadays but, for the most part, this is a compelling recreation of a true story and a character study of two men who will be forever linked.