Kathryn Bigelow returns to her wheelhouse with A House of Dynamite, a military thriller available on Netflix about the launch of a nuclear warhead heading straight for the USA. It’s an interesting premise, but does the award-winning director of Zero Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker strike again? Let’s find out.
A House of Dynamite is a star-studded film that features the likes of Rebecca Ferguson, Idris Elba, Jared Harris, and Gabriel Basso in leading roles, with Jason Clarke, Tracy Letts, Moses Ingram, Greta Lee, and Anthony Ramos, among others, in supporting roles. When the US detect an ICBM over the Pacific Ocean, questions emerge about its origin, its destination, and if the launch is even real. The film is broken up into three parts, each largely real-time, and we see the same events happen from different points of view as various high-level political figures discuss what to do with such an unprecedented moment in such a short window of time, approximately 18 minutes.
Bigelow is no stranger to military political thrillers, so it’s a bit of a bummer that this one isn’t on the same level as her previous works (including the criminally overlooked Detroit). ButHouse of Dynamite feels a bit lacking, despite the promising setup. It’s not a bad movie, but it leaves the audience wanting far too much and giving too little at the same time. Because the film opts to tell the same story three times over, we, the audience, get to see those events happen over and over again. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing, had the movie opted for a Roshamon-style three-truths narrative structure akin to The Last Duel. But it doesn’t, it just shows the same calls and conversations from different rooms. Most of this movie takes place over video or phone calls, so we see the reactions or the lead-up to certain interactions from different rooms in each segment. But the film is very much confined to the decision makers, whether that be the President, SECDEF, the individuals in the Situation Room, Generals, soldiers, and so on. We don’t see this massive event happen from anyone outside of these calls, really, save for a brief interaction with Russian counterparts or FEMA, which teases a more interesting chapter that never comes to fruition. I get that Bigelow and her team wanted to have this movie as real-time as possible, and with so many characters, it would be hard to do that, but revisiting the same moments from slightly different perspectives without really gaining any new insights or even biases causes the movie to enter slog territory by the time we see things happen for the third time.
The bigger offence, that said, is that A House of Dynamite offers no answers or a conclusion to this story. We never learn who fired the bomb, if there was a mole in the US government, if the launch was intentional or accidental, if the bomb even detonates (maybe it’s a dud?), and what the US response to the attack even is. It’s a bit maddening to watch these decision makers grapple with what to do over and over again and not be rewarded with any sort of closure. After watching these powerful figures grapple with the weight of choice, we never see that choice. We’re denied any sort of closure or payoff. Considering this movie is built around the concept of “what do we do now”, not knowing what happens is infuriating.
It’s too bad that the A House of Dynamite fumbles, as the lead-up, in particular the first chapter, where everything is new and fresh for the audience, is really engaging. There’s a terrific sense of tension and fear that lurks in the movie as the timer ticks down to the impending doom of a major US city. This is only amplified by an excellent score by Volker Bertelmann, channelling some Bourne vibes with string arrangements that create a sense of urgency and despair. The cast all show up to work as well, with Jared Harris in particular giving a great performance. There’s very little characterization to this story, too, but considering this is meant to mimic a critical situation in near-real time, I don’t see that as a negative, as the film stays locked onto the situation at hand. Likewise, the film doesn’t really have any sort of message, apart from maybe how woefully underprepared we are for a situation like this, but again, I don’t think this movie needed to have a message. It just needed to refocus on how to tell this story and come up with a satisfying ending for it. As it stands, A House of Dynamite is a bit of a misfire from the usually reliable Kathryn Bigelow. It’s okay at best, but with a cast and director like this movie has, it should have been an easy recommendation.