It would be easy to dismiss Gus Van Sant’s latest movie as an exercise in 70s cinema style, which he pulls off with his usual skill and aplomb, but his recreation of a real life hostage incident that took place in Indianapolis in 1977 is more than just the sum of its fashion fatalities and needle drops. It’s an incisive and sardonic take on how desperate people turn to the media to make their cases in a world that would rather ignore them. Though this is hardly an original theme, Van Sant has found in his protagonist, a wannabe entrepreneur named Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skaragård), a man whose relative decency and intelligence are completely upended by his pathetic need for validation. The fact that the various players who get sucked into his game seem to sympathize with Kiritsis while understanding that they are complicit in his downfall, is the movie’s most salient aspect.

Kiritsis’s gripe is against a local mortgage company that foreclosed on a loan he took out to buy property he hoped to develop into a shopping center. He believes the company purposely discouraged the parties he was dealing with in order to underhandedly take over the property and do the deal themselves. He arrives on the fateful day for an appointment with the company’s president (Al Pacino, overdoing the regional accent), who, in apparently typical fashion, has taken the day off to fly to a resort in Florida; so Kiritsis meets with the president’s son, Richard (Dacre Montgomery), whom he promptly threatens with a shotgun that he attaches to his neck by the titular appliance. Kiritsis’s demands are simple: he wants his money back and an apology, neither of which the president, contacted in Florida, is willing to provide, thus placing his very own son in a very dangerous situation. Kiritsis compromises by setting up a press conference where his grievances are publicized in detail. However, getting to this point is what the movie is all about, as a rookie TV journalist (Myha’la) rallies her meager resources in order to make her name; the local soul station DJ (Colman Domingo), a hero of Kiritsis’s, tries to use his position as a community leader and token symbol of success to convince Kiritsis he can trust the police (though, being a Black man, he knows that he himself can’t trust them); and various acquaintances of Kiritsis, including his brother and a cop he often drinks with at his favorite tavern, try to do the right thing, which tends to shift from moment to moment.

Thanks to Pacino’s presence, the cinema model that first comes to mind is Dog Day Afternoon, but Pacino’s character in that classic was pathetic in an entirely ridiculous way. Skaragård’s Kiritsis is both more technically savvy about carrying out his scheme, and almost pathologically ignorant of what the most likely outcome of his actions will entail. His optimism in the face of overwhelming opposition to his demands is impressive and terrifying, and while the outcome is predictable, it’s also instructive in ways you don’t expect. Van Sant obviously sees in Kiritsis a kindred spirit. Despite his drawbacks as a human specimen, you root for him, because you know he’s probably right.

Opens July 17 in Tokyo at Kadokawa Cinema Yurakucho (03-6268-0015), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Yebisu Garden Cinema (0570-783-715).

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