What to stream this week: Jon Hamm’s timely crime thriller, plus five more picks
This week’s picks include a thoughtful crime thriller based on a real (and surprisingly timely) crime, a spinoff to the smash-hit Amazon Prime Video series Reacher, plus a new Kiwi comedy starring Morgana O’Reilly from The White Lotus.
American Hostage (Stan*) ★★★
In February 1977, Indianapolis businessman Tony Kiritsis took an executive from his mortgage broker, Richard Hall, hostage for 63 hours using a “dead man’s line” – a homemade alteration to a shotgun, where a wire placed around Hall’s neck was connected to the trigger.
Any sudden movements, such as Kiritsis letting go of the gun if he was shot, and the trigger would fire the gun. The device left local police helpless, allowing Kiritsis to leave Hall’s office and hijack a police car to hole up in his apartment, wired with explosives.
Believing himself to be squeezed out of a real-estate scheme by his mortgage brokers, Kiritsis demanded $US5 million ($7 million), a public apology from the brokers, and a chance to explain his position via an interview with his favourite local radio host Fred Heckman.
Gaining sympathy and outright support from a vocal portion of the public who also felt cheated, Kiritsis was, for many, a vigilante figure not unlike how some view Luigi Mangione.
Mangione’s 2024 fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson certainly hangs over Hollywood’s not one, but two, dramatisations of Kiritsis’ crime in 2026, even if both were in development prior. There’s American Hostage, a miniseries starring Jon Hamm and Giovanni Ribisi (itself based on a 2022 podcast play also starring Hamm), as well as Gus Van Sant’s recently released film Dead Man’s Wire, starring Bill Skarsgård, Dacre Montgomery and Colman Domingo (on VOD, inspired by 2018 documentary Dead Man’s Line).
Which is worth your time? Dead Man’s Wire is the more electric – a loving, vibrant ode to ’70s filmmaking, essentially Van Sant’s chance to make his own Dog Day Afternoon – while American Hostage is far more thought-provoking albeit, with eight 40-50 minute episodes, sluggish.
Where the film focuses on the crime itself, lingering on the sickly rising tension between Kiritsis and Hall, American Hostage centres on Heckman. It’s more interested in exploring the media’s role in the saga than its perpetrator’s psychology.
“This could be a story about a mad man taking his mortgage broker hostage, or an indictment on the American dream – or both,” says Heckman, perhaps more motivated by careerist aspirations than journalistic integrity. Played by Hamm, it’s a role reminiscent of Don Draper – and not just because of Heckman’s suave suits.
Hamm’s best scenes come via split-screen with Kiritsis (a well-cast Ribisi, who can switch at any second between quirky charm and menace), as his face cracks with unease before composing himself, aware that a man’s life hangs on his ability to say the exact right string of words. That weariness builds throughout American Hostage, with Hamm’s minute expressions – used so well in Mad Men – revealing an inner turmoil that, while fascinating, probably could have been conveyed in five episodes rather than eight.
Neagley (Amazon Prime Video) ★★★
Hugely popular action series Reacher has a simple appeal: watching a hulking wall of muscle (Alan Ritchson) take justice into his own fists. There’s slightly more to it than that, but neither Reacher nor its namesake is particularly complex, with Jack Reacher’s imposing power and steely confidence best surmised by his size than anything else. That’s not a slight: the character’s creator, best-selling novelist Lee Child, told The Independent he prefers tank-like Ritchson’s presence to Tom Cruise’s two-film turn as Reacher because Cruise is “not huge and he’s not scary”. Arriving the same day as Reacher’s season-four finale, Neagley knows it can’t offer the same supersized thrills.
The spin-off follows Jack’s closest ally, Frances Neagley (Maria Sten) – a tough-nut private eye and ex-military woman. Instead, the series mixes in a darker tone among the glossy, quip-filled action, as Neagley pairs up with a Chicago cop (Greyston Holt) to investigate a new-age community she believes is responsible for her childhood friend’s death. Australian Damon Herriman – Hollywood’s go-to Manson (Mindhunter, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) – plays the community’s leader, unsettling as ever.
As seen in Reacher, Neagley also has haphephobia, a hatred/fear of being touched, which forms the basis of her own secondary investigation into her foggy past. A perfunctory trauma plot that pads out the show.
Friends and Strangers (Mubi) ★★★★
Australian writer-director James Vaughan’s debut feature is a dry-humoured, quietly biting comedy about this country’s cultural malaise, following twenty-something videographer Ray (Fergus Wilson) as he fumbles through odd jobs, romantic getaways and awkward conversations. Over its 84 minutes, Friends and Strangers’ witty, increasingly absurd vignettes may feel as directionless as its characters. But the film – aided by a vibrant rendering of Sydney by cinematographer Dimitri Zaunders that lingers on colonial trinkets, artworks and architecture – links the characters’ self-indulgent emotional avoidance to Australia’s own reluctance to wrestle with its violent colonial origins. Ambitious and self-reflexive.
Call My Agent!: The Movie (Netflix) ★★★
George Clooney is among the millions during 2020 who discovered the joys of Call My Agent!, a French talent agency farce where each episode features cameos from major stars as themselves. Six years after the series ended with the agency’s closure, Clooney joins the ranks for a scene in the long-promised movie sequel, via a disastrous meeting to discuss starring in agent-turned-director Andrea’s (Camille Cottin) debut feature – a drama that becomes a comedy-of-errors during production. Avoiding feeling like a stretched-out episode, Call My Agent!: The Movie’s reunion outside of the office is the right mix of familiar yet fresh.
Bust Up (HBO Max) ★★★
Kiwi actor Morgana O’Reilly (The White Lotus) leads this charming buddy-cop drama as a constable of a small town north of Auckland who is rattled when her ex-girlfriend (Roimata Fox) arrives as the precinct’s new detective. Opening on a janky bank robbery where the robber’s rubber shark mask triggers his asthma, Bust Up’s pilot is a wacky mix of oddball locals, Irish jigs and lesbian pining. But this isn’t New Zealand’s answer to Deadloch. The series settles over its six episodes into a moody drama, albeit with a solid serving of the country’s self-deprecating humour.
The Apprentice (Stan) ★★★★
Donald Trump tried – and failed – to ban this biopic in 2024 starring Sebastian Stan in an Oscar-nominated performance, calling it “election interference”. It certainly wouldn’t make anyone MAGA. Evoking the rush of a coming-of-age story, it might, however, sweep you up in Trump’s rise as a real estate mogul in the ’70s and ’80s under mentor Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong). Director Ali Abbasi lets Trump’s brutish charisma seep into The Apprentice, but any warmth erodes in the second half, leaving you stranded in a cruel, cold world of ’80s excess and gold-plated tackiness.
*Stan is owned by Nine, the publisher of this masthead.