Dead Man’s Wire (2026)

Could have benefitted from a tighter edit, I think. One or two too many layers of side character on the media end of this, as if their subplots exist to justify some slick image or the attention commanded by an incredible voice. I think there is something interesting about the media’s function in this story, but “plucky journalist’s breakthrough” and “cool DJ crisis counselor” are things that a movie needs to be about to avoid falling to cliche. 

I think going leaner would have made this much meaner, and when it’s just Tony and Richard (and ML) it’s already pretty bleak. The trailers hint at populism, but this is not a midwestern Dog Day Afternoon. You don’t sympathize with Tony, not really — his beef is that he got screwed out of being a landlord, he knows and likes all of the cops — and I don’t think Van Sant wants you to. 

That’s fine — the movie is at its most effective when it’s pared down to Bill Skarsgård’s performance, where he rants about justice like a wrestler trying to talk you into coming down to the Omni but is, as Pacino’s ML Hall later observes, a wreck despite the amount of control he has. There are a couple of sequences here — the kidnapping and a phone call with a recalcitrant Pacino — that will likely stand out as being among the best of 2026, and if the rest of the film maintained that energy we’d be talking about a great film as opposed to a good time at the theater, but it is also worth having a good time at the theater.