Overview

• Screened out of competition at the 82nd Venice Film Festival, the film drew sustained applause and strong early notices.
• The story dramatizes Anthony “Tony” Kiritsis’s 1977 kidnapping using the infamous “dead man’s wire” device as a focal image.
• Van Sant frames the movie as a critique of the financial system and invites identification with a man pushed toward a desperate act.
• The production weaves archival material with period-style visuals and staged live-TV coverage to probe media spectacle.
• Bill Skarsgård plays Kiritsis, Dacre Montgomery portrays the hostage, and Al Pacino appears as the company figure, while reports differ on whether the real incident occurred in Indianapolis or Minneapolis.