Dacre Montgomery happy 'Dead Man's Wire' plays like a '70s classic

Stranger Things and Elvis alum Dacre Montgomery says it is a testament to the extraordinary talents of filmmaker Gus Van Sant if the new fact-based hostage drama, Dead Man's Wire, feels like a gritty classic from the 1970s.

"It really does feel like that in every way and there's so many little Easter eggs, like Al Pacino, obviously, coming from Dog Day Afternoon, the same year that this movie is set," Montgomery told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.

"There's so many amazing little treats in it," added the 31-year-old Australian actor. "It also makes the movie so much more accessible that it's not a big $50 million, shiny thing. It's actually rough around the edges and it's actually real. It's actually a conversation we need to be having right now in the world."

In theaters Friday, the film is based on the extraordinary true story of how Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgard) held mortgage broker Richard Hall (Montgomery) at gunpoint in a stand-off with police for 63 hours in 1977 Indianapolis.

The hostage situation became a media circus, with some people championing Kiritsis as a hero for standing up for himself against a company he accused of swindling him out of his life savings.

Pacino plays Hall's cold-hearted father, while Cary Elwes plays a police detective and Colman Domingo plays a radio disc jockey, both of whom try to talk Kiritsis off the ledge before someone gets hurt or dies.

"He's an interesting character. The fact that he remains so surface-level stoic the entire time baffles me in so many different ways," Montgomery said of Hall.

"He wrote an amazing book [Kiritsis and Me: Enduring 63 Hours at Gunpoint] after he was held hostage, which actually provides a lot of insight into what was going on in his life then and following the events. So, I kind of followed that heavily to kind of get into his head-space and create that character in its new form 50 years later."

Montgomery admitted it was challenging to play a man who was physically confined in a tiny New York apartment with a shotgun wired to the back of his head, so that if he tried to escape or if law-enforcement tried to take Kiritsis out, Hall would be killed.

"It's extremely hard and it was very taxing, physically and emotionally to have a wire around my neck and stuff. But all of that stuff actually helped so much. The fact that we shot this film so quickly was great because the hostage situation takes place over four days," Montgomery said.

"We shot this film chronologically, which really helps for us to follow the story from the office building to Tony's apartment to the final negotiation in front of the cameras at the end of the movie," the actor said. "There were so many things that helped the general energy and momentum of the film and then the physical constraints helped hugely to fuel all of that kind of malaise and angst that Dick was feeling."

Montgomery said he and Skarsgard -- best known for his work in the IT franchise -- trusted each other enough to improvise in the apartment to heighten the tension.

"Bill's wonderful, one of the best scene partners I've ever had and a good friend," he said.

"I really, really enjoyed working with him. His attention to detail and his intensity is all reflected in his performance, which I think is amazing," Montgomery added. "I'm always learning from my cast-mates and my directors and I did that at every step of this."

Leaving this harrowing role behind once the cameras stopped rolling wasn't easy, Montgomery said.

"There's no middle ground. I go 1,000 percent when I'm working. It's my everything. It's my whole world and it was hard to shed this character," he explained.

"I balded myself. My eyebrows were kind of gone," Montgomery added. "Even just physically, the dregs of the shoot, in the way I looked, bled into me, trying to wash off and let go of this character. So, it was a lot, but really rewarding and I'm really glad that the movie is resonating with people because they feel like, obviously, it's very topical and that's a nice full-circle moment after having wrapped the film."

UPI freelance photographer John H. Blair was only inches away from Kiritsis during the final moments of the crisis, snapping the picture that won him a Pulitzer Prize as Hall closed his eyes as if preparing for the end.

Kiritsis was arrested, tried and found not guilty by reason of insanity. He was released from a mental institution in 1988 and died in 2005 at the age of 72.