The versatile Bill Skarsgård plays a man who has grown so furious with his local mortgage company that he takes the owner’s grown son hostage. He fashions a noose-like rope around his neck and attaches it to a rifle, all in broad daylight. His brazen act stirs what we now call a media circus.It’s an absurd and desperate desire for revenge against the businessmen who have wronged him, but he is nothing if not determined. With a passing nod to Dog Day Afternoon, young screenwriter Austin Kolodney fleshes out the narrative with incidents and character quirks that make for compelling entertainment. Gus Van Sant’s direction is straightforward and unfussy, lending an almost documentary feel to the film at times. An extended cameo appearance by Al Pacino, as the head of the mortgage firm (and father of the hostage) threatens the verisimilitude of the piece but is so enjoyable that it would be Scrooge-like to complain …It’s an unpretentious, engrossing movie that’s well worth seeing.-Leonard Maltin