{"id":110182,"date":"2025-09-02T23:02:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T23:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/110182\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T23:02:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T23:02:07","slug":"a-house-of-dynamite-review-high-tension-potboiler-with-pretensions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/110182\/","title":{"rendered":"‘A House of Dynamite’ Review: High-Tension Potboiler With Pretensions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIf the distinction between a \u201cfilm\u201d and a \u201cmovie\u201d still means anything, then the first six days of the Venice Film Festival<\/a> have most definitely given us films. \u201cA House of Dynamite<\/a>,\u201d on the other hand, is a movie \u2014 or, more to the point, a Netflix movie, though even Netflix sometimes makes films (like the ones they have in this year\u2019s festival, \u201cFrankenstein\u201d and \u201cJay Kelly\u201d). But \u201cA House of Dynamite,\u201d a countdown-to-nuclear-disaster thriller directed by Kathryn Bigelow<\/a>, is jacked up with so many familiar MOR tropes that even though it\u2019s trying to be realistic about what it shows you (spoiler alert: It doesn\u2019t really succeed), it still has the feel of a self-consciously jittery high-end cautionary potboiler. Don\u2019t try this at home! Or in the White House Situation Room!<\/p>\n

\n\tA lone nuclear missile has been launched, by a mysterious and anonymous national aggressor, from somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. The nuke is rapidly heading toward the United States. How rapidly? In just 19 minutes, it will land somewhere in the Midwest \u2014 and it doesn\u2019t take the American security apparatus long to figure out that that place is Chicago. Unless the weapon can be stopped, it will kill 10 million people on contact.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s an aesthetic paradox built into the opening half hour of \u201cA House of Dynamite.\u201d The movie is not a piece of grandiose Jerry Bruckheimer doom porn. Its tone is somber and responsible. Yet part of that is that it\u2019s made in an aggressively overheated style of furrowed-brow thriller \u201cimportance\u201d that\u2019s meant to convey a vibe of verisimilitude. The split-second editing and hand-held camera. The way the film keeps flashing important-sounding government acronyms (PEOC, STRATCOM, OSD). The token slivers of human-interest drama (a divorce battle, a visit to the pediatrician) that are meant to counterpoint the possibility of Armageddon with the oh-so-ironic triviality of quotidian concerns. The ominoso soundtrack that keeps punching up the urgency of the situation like the music on one of those \u201cinvestigative\u201d tabloid-TV shows.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo be honest, I was surprised to see Kathryn Bigelow rely on so many of these breathless generic devices. At her best she\u2019s a great filmmaker, one who brought the secret assassination of Osama bin Laden to a riveting pitch of authentic life in \u201cZero Dark Thirty,\u201d and who in her follow-up film, \u201cDetroit\u201d (2017), dramatized the Algiers Motel incident that took place during Detroit\u2019s 1967 12th Street Riot, imagining her way inside it with a complex force that got behind the face of American police brutality. But \u201cDetroit,\u201d vital a film as I thought it was, did not get a good response, and it went down as a major dud. Bigelow hasn\u2019t directed another film until now, and \u201cA House of Dynamite\u201d is just the kind of movie you make when you\u2019re trying to bounce back from a failure of that magnitude. It\u2019s easy to watch, it\u2019s wired to be exciting, with a showy hot-button relevance, but the problem with the movie is that it isn\u2019t quite convincing. It\u2019s trapped between trying to be a \u201cserious\u201d thriller and a piece of glorified schlock.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat opening half hour certainly holds us, as we suck in our breath at the prospect of a rogue missile speeding toward the U.S. We think: How is this going to be a real-time movie if the nuke is set to strike in just 19 minutes? Bigelow, working from a script by Noah Oppenheim (\u201cJackie\u201d), ushers us into the White House Situation Room, the office of military command, and the Oval Office, all adjoined by video screens, and shows us the power players trying to coordinate a strategy \u2014\u00a0from Rebecca Ferguson as the Situation Room senior duty officer to Jason Clarke as her commander to Jared Harris as the fulminating Secretary of Defense to Tracy Letts as the hawkish general who commands STRATCOM (U.S. Strategic Command) to Anthony Ramos as the crew commander of Fort Greely in Alaska, a pivotal base of the nation\u2019s Ballistic Missile Defense System. Each of these people have their assigned tasks, and speak in high-energy jargon, but their conversation boils down to \u201cWhat the hell are we going to do?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s really only one option: Shoot the missile out of the sky. They will do it with a GBI (Ground-Based Interceptor), which, in case you didn\u2019t know, contains an EKV (Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle). \u201cA House of Dynamite\u201d is full of dialogue like \u201cEKV is separated from the first GBI. One minute to intercept!\u201d You would think that the United States, with an approaching nuclear missile, could summon all its might and technical know-how to neutralize the threat. But the movie\u2019s big message is that that\u2019s a reassuring illusion. As the deputy national security adviser, played by a disarmingly boyish Gabriel Basso (I\u2019m sorry, he looks like someone whose job should be to run and get coffee), informs us, the chances of the GBI actually taking out the nuke are just 61 percent. Which causes Jared Harris\u2019s testy defense secretary to exclaim, \u201cSo it\u2019s a fucking coin toss? This is what $50 billion buys us?\u201d (I guess he didn\u2019t know.) \u201cA House of Dynamite\u201d stirs the pot of our fears, saying that the risk of a nuclear attack we can\u2019t defend ourselves against is much greater than we\u2019re accustomed to thinking. But do I actually trust what the movie is saying? Let\u2019s just say that this is what a Netflix budget buys us.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat opening half hour comes to a close, and it turns out to be the first of three chapters. The other two will rewind and replay the exact same scenario, only from the vantage of different characters. I found this to be a mixed bag of a dramatic blueprint. The first section is reasonably tense and engrossing. But in the second part, when we realize that we\u2019re going to be watching a different version of the same thing, like in \u201cRashomon\u201d (except that there\u2019s no contradiction among the points-of-view), it feels, dare I say it, repetitive. The second section focuses on the debate about who could have launched the nuke in the first place. North Korea seems the most obvious candidate, since it\u2019s a rogue state. But the possibility of Russia is explored \u2014 the idea being that the Russians would want not to start a nuclear war but to sow the seeds of chaos in the U.S. But would that work? How could Russia launch a nuke at us without us knowing it was Russia? (I know, I know: That\u2019s what $50 billion buys us.) And should the U.S. respond with an all-out retaliatory attack? \u201cA House of Dynamite\u201d seems to be taking place in a world where the threat of mutually assured destruction doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe third episode replays these events from the POV of the President of the United States, and I have to say: Idris Elba<\/a>, as the president, does not give a good performance. The president starts out by making a visit to Liberty Arena to play basketball with some school children, then gets jerked away when the crisis happens. But Elba, throughout, acts way too casual. He doesn\u2019t seem presidential when he\u2019s with those kids, and when confronted with the nuclear situation, he acts more regular-guy befuddled than commanding. Why is the deputy national security adviser \u2014 yes, the coffee kid \u2014 on the phone with a Russian official? Shouldn\u2019t the president be on the phone with the Russian president? Why is he governing by hearsay? And why does he act like the binder of nuclear codes is a homework assignment he doesn\u2019t want to bother to crack?\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tI get it: It\u2019s only\u2026a movie! But \u201cA House of Dynamite\u201d tries to have it both ways. It is, at heart, a rather farfetched piece of entertainment (which is fine), but it wants the credibility of making us say, \u201cOh! I didn\u2019t realize how much danger we were in!\u201d The title is the film\u2019s metaphor for how we\u2019re living, surrounded by the destructive power of nuclear weapons, with leaders who no longer share the post-Cold War dream of cutting down on the stockpile of them. But this actually comes off as a rather dated post-Cold War vision of what we have to fear. Yes, the more nuclear treaties the better. But the problem right now isn\u2019t the number of weapons. It\u2019s who\u2019s in charge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If the distinction between a \u201cfilm\u201d and a \u201cmovie\u201d still means anything, then the first six days of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[53336,96,53337,53338,2839,56,54,55,10306],"class_list":["post-110182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-a-house-of-dynamite","tag-entertainment","tag-idris-elba","tag-kathryn-bigelow","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-venice-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}