Dead Man’s Wire (Gus Van Sant, 2025)
A sterile rehashing of Dog Day Afternoon stripped of its socio-economic contexts while also being bafflingly incurious about its equally righteous but volatile protagonist.
Right from the go Gus Van Sant seems more interested in this as a mere exercise in aesthetics. Evidence of which is his primary framing device: not the tragically unwitting entrepreneur, not the leeching banker nor his son, but the media. Perhaps there is an angle there, one which investigates how a spectacle such as this is created and disseminated. But the film is only interested in recreating the texture of a time: punctuating scenes are what appear to be photographic stills of the actual event but in reality they are recreations meant as some aesthetic flourish.
The acting, especially Skarsgard and Myha’la, verges on mimicry. But in their defence with such thinly written characters they can’t help but come across as trying too hard. Actually I don’t understand what Myha’la’s character is doing here but I quite like Montgomery and Domingo. But then again, all these characters so little time, such little chemistry. Who or what is this film about?
Frustrated not because this is insincere writing, just unfocused.