In American Hostage, Jon Hamm explores why those who feel voiceless turn to violence

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Set us as preferred A solitary man believes he’s been wronged by a vast, overarching system.Feeling helpless to take it on directly, he picks up a gun and violently confronts the most powerful person he can think of who embodies his grievance.It is a chilling dynamic that keeps repeating itself in American culture, and one at the heart of “American Hostage,” a dramatic miniseries making its debut Sunday on MGM+.The eight-episode series re-creates the true story of Tony Kiritsis, an Indianapolis man who, in 1977, kidnapped Richard O.

Hall, a mortgage broker whose family Kiritsis blamed for his own financial hardships.The standoff lasted 63 hours, during which Kiritsis kept a shotgun attached by wire to Hall’s neck, and it became a national media spectacle.Throughout the crisis, Kiritsis made live calls to Fred Heckman, a local AM radio news broadcaster, pleading to listeners for the justice he believed he was due.A half-century after this incident, not even the creators and stars of “American Hostage” can say for certain why we find stories like this so compelling — or why they keep happening in real life.“We haven’t quite figured this situation out,” said Jon Hamm, who plays Heckman in “American Hostage” and is one of its executive producers.The “Mad Men” star — no stranger to period pieces — said that beneath its retro production values and wide lapels, “American Hostage” is fundamentally about how people who feel voiceless in our society fight to be heard, even if the means is violence.“There’s a lot that really resonates in the current media landscape and culture 50 years down the road, that people can still really connect with,” Hamm said.Hamm and his colleagues hardly need to argue that point when the nation has been fixated on the case of Luigi Mangione, who in August pleaded gu...