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Kathryn Bigelow is rightly celebrated as a notable maker of action films. Her artistry as a portrayer, specifically of very bright people navigating exceptionally demanding, multifaceted, crucial assignments, is less acknowledged. “Zero Dark Thirty” (2012), a sternly resolute suspense film regarding the pursuit of Osama bin Laden, provided a grimly concentrated examination of a C.I.A. operative fully embracing her lethal instincts to the extent mandated by her post. “The Hurt Locker” (2009), unfolding amid the U.S. invasion of Iraq, functioned less as a typical war film and more as a chillingly absorbing depiction of a brilliant expert who discovered his optimal setting, defusing explosives around Baghdad with devil-may-care insouciance. Here was a man—and concurrently a filmmaker—adept at managing volatile elements. Few other American helmers grasp as well the impact that controlled realism can exert on matters of life and death, or the manner in which character reveals itself via actions.
This illuminates why the nuclear-countdown thriller “A House of Dynamite,” currently presented in select cinemas prior to its October 24th streaming launch, on Netflix, emerges as such a perplexing underuse of Bigelow’s capabilities. The film, which speculates on an impending nuclear assault upon a significant American metropolis, is a flimsy yet pretentious instance of doomsday kitsch, mainly filled with shadowy figures in suits and devoid of the base thrills that kitsch, at its finest, can deliver. It falls into the category of hyper-amped control-room dramas: a timer ticks relentlessly in the background, everyone articulates in dense official acronyms, and a dire scenario unfolds on numerous levels, spanning initial defenses to the highest governmental echelons. “A House of Dynamite” aspires to emulate a modern “Fail Safe” or “Seven Days in May,” a speculative nail-biter tailored for our era. Yet, upon its conclusion, my cuticles remained entirely unscathed, and throughout, the sole anxiety I could summon concerned Bigelow—a developing apprehension that she had engaged in combat with subpar material and suffered defeat.
It commences on a seemingly unremarkable morning in America, yet nothing truly conveys normality, given the movie’s overt efforts to underscore that very ordinariness. The script, penned by Noah Oppenheim (the writer behind Pablo Larraín’s biopic “Jackie”), channels its anxieties through a forced and artificial rendition of routine workplace dialogue, wherein each endeavor at casualness seems contrived. The individuals, almost exclusively government personnel, are sketched like entries on a spreadsheet; the more fortunate receive a spot within the “Personal Drama” section. At a missile-defense installation in Fort Greely, Alaska, Major Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos) retreats to a tense phone conversation, presumably with his romantic partner. In Washington, D.C., a despondent FEMA employee named Cathy Rogers (Moses Ingram) prattles regarding her forthcoming divorce as she strides toward her workplace, where she’ll dedicate an early segment of her day scrutinizing Zillow listings. (Spoiler alert: they will become irrelevant.)
More content, at least initially, is Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson), who bestows a farewell kiss upon her spouse and offspring before departing for her duties at the White House. Ferguson provides what unequivocally constitutes the film’s most compelling portrayal, partially attributable to her inherent charisma in unearthing an actual character—sharp, productive, pragmatic—concealed beneath layers of commonplace actions. I could readily watch a ten-minute compilation of Walker progressing through White House security, admonishing a slow-moving individual in the breakfast queue, securing her personal mobile device, and proceeding into the Situation Room, where a massive screen is poised to illuminate with grave developments.
Shortly thereafter, Fort Greely detects an intercontinental ballistic missile being launched from somewhere within the Pacific—presumably a mere exercise, destined to splash down in the Sea of Japan. Abruptly, however, the trajectory shifts: “Inclination is flattening,” someone declares, and even viewers lacking parabola expertise will deduce, from the strain evident in her tone, the unfolding event. Swiftly, the gravity intensifies to a horrifying reality: the missile will strike Chicago in under twenty minutes. Rogers, the FEMA staffer, calculates that approximately ten million individuals will perish, with an additional ten million succumbing to the subsequent fallout. These casualty figures, naturally, represent only the genesis, contingent upon the scale of apocalyptic retaliation the U.S. opts to undertake—a dilemma complicated by the absence of knowledge regarding the initiating nation. Satellites failed to register the initial launch, the inaugural error in a spiraling series of mishaps, encompassing multiple botched attempts to intercept or obliterate the missile, thereby exposing the precarious nature of our nuclear-defense mechanisms.
Consequently, this signifies the manner in which the world concludes: not with a forceful explosion or a feeble lament (any precise impact occurs beyond the camera’s view) but through agitated bursts of office interactions. It will similarly conclude with abundant ominous musical vibrations—Glarrrrggghhh! Glarrrrggghhh!—intended to wrench your insides, yet instead assaulting the movie’s solemn objectives akin to a severe episode of flatulence. The composition stems from Volker Bertelmann, whose monotonous musical patterns you may recall from “All Quiet on the Western Front” (2022) and “Conclave” (2024). For “A House of Dynamite,” he has fashioned yet another onslaught of groans, which serves to render portions of the dialogue even more artificial than they would appear in isolation. At one juncture, the President of the United States (Idris Elba) laments, “This is insanity!” An underling’s remarkably deadpan retort: “No, sir. This is reality.” Glarrrrggghhh!
Oppenheim must have derived satisfaction from that exchange; he compels us to hear it repeatedly. “A House of Dynamite” is intentionally iterative; it’s a crisis composition in three parts, each encapsulating the identical agonizing time frame, albeit from the vantage of diverse governmental procedures and institutions. Following the initial segment, alternating between Fort Greely and the Situation Room, the film reverses and reiterates the same occurrence from a more elevated vantage, this instance primarily contrasting the peace-inclined deputy national-security advisor, Jake Baerington (a congenial Gabriel Basso), against a belligerent senior military officer, General Anthony Brody (a punchable Tracy Letts). Potential instigators receive due consideration; frantic calls are directed to the Russian Foreign Minister, in addition to a North Korea authority, Ana Park (Greta Lee), who, in a particularly heavy-handed instance of thematic irony, transpires to be attending a Battle of Gettysburg reenactment when her telephone rings. When, oh when, will the carnage of history cease?
The third section focuses upon the President and Reid Baker (Jared Harris), the Secretary of Defense, neither of whom particularly excels during the ordeal; the higher up the chain of command we ascend, the less effective the leadership manifests. The President appears irritable and overwhelmed, and Elba delivers an oddly off-kilter enactment; he seems as uncertain about his portrayal of this POTUS as this POTUS is regarding how to rescue the world. Simultaneously, the Defense Secretary recedes into a personal haze, preoccupied solely with his daughter (Kaitlyn Dever), residing in Chicago. I recalled an episode, dating from 2005, of the real-time counterterrorism series “24,” wherein a government tech expert, discovering a nuclear power-plant meltdown, attempts in vain to evacuate his mother remotely. Throughout the film, Bigelow incorporates the jumpy formal structure of productions such as “24” and features such as Paul Greengrass’s 9/11 docudrama “United 93” (2006), which transform workplaces into combat zones and foster a sustained sensation of immersion. However, “A House of Dynamite” is excessively fragmented to attain the identical momentum, and its tri-part format feels simultaneously affected and irritatingly obtuse. Each instance the plot resets, the suspense dissipates.
Limited aspects of this correspond with Bigelow’s aptitudes. She has previously directed at least one nail-biting nuclear-crisis movie, the Soviet-submarine suspense tale “K-19: The Widowmaker” (2002). Nonetheless, at her apex, she possesses a knack for rendering the passage of time feeling fluid, hypnotic, and artistically indistinct, rather than artificially manipulated and pressurized. She excels at subtly enriching the inner worlds of genuine individuals undertaking their responsibilities under actual operating conditions. This transcends the capabilities attainable via this breed of brisk and superficial “24” imitation, regardless of the accompanying immaculate D.C. production design. Even its title, “A House of Dynamite,” elicits an eye roll—a verbose mouthful of metaphor, particularly originating from a director whose prior film titles have frequently exhibited a penchant for tersely evocative terminology (“Near Dark,” “Strange Days,” “Point Break”).
Bigelow has frequently faced accusations of apoliticism—or, as a result of her captivation with the codes, rituals, and aesthetics inherent to men at war, of endorsing a gung-ho valorization of American militarism. Within the broader bureaucratic vista of “A House of Dynamite,” she presents such a pessimistic perspective on U.S. disaster response, even when depicted with a more functional and capable government than our current one, that it’s challenging to interpret any aspect as propagandistic—or, consequently, politically precise. (Specific character particulars imply a blend of bipartisan associations: a female briefing the White House press contingent bears a striking resemblance to Jen Psaki, former President Joe Biden’s initial press secretary. Elba’s President is engaged in a photo op with young basketball participants when the calamity strikes—a milder iteration of the instance when President George W. Bush initially received notification of the September 11th attacks, during a Florida elementary-school reading of “The Pet Goat.”)
Within another pivotal context, “A House of Dynamite” appears as a pronounced departure from Bigelow’s recent endeavors. Her preceding two productions were both censured for their utilization and depictions of brutality: “Zero Dark Thirty” faced allegations of twisting scenarios of torture into endorsements of torture, while “Detroit” (2017), an underappreciated drama unfolding during the civil-rights period, garnered criticism for exploiting the very atrocities it sought to condemn. Conversely, “A House of Dynamite” is conspicuously devoid of onscreen bloodshed, extending to its muted conclusion. I registered a solitary death—an unexpectedly humorous one—but the looming mass slaughter remains an offscreen abstraction, possibly even an emblem of artistic restraint.
Why, therefore, does it evoke the impression of a failure rooted in trepidation? I am not advocating that Bigelow should have depicted the obliteration of a major metropolitan hub and its human population; we possess Roland Emmerich for such scenarios. Nevertheless, a grand-scale disaster epic might have genuinely disturbed us with greater efficacy than this finicky chamber exercise and whatever it presumes to accomplish. Resembling last year’s mediocre “September 5,” which partly dramatized the terrorist offensives at the 1972 Munich Olympics through the lens of an ABC Sports crew, “A House of Dynamite” unwittingly insinuates that, as a cinematic genre, the control-room suspense film may be nearing its boundaries, exhibiting clichés, evasions, and theatrical contrivances as formulaic as those common to any blockbuster.
As it transpires, there existed a blockbuster earlier this year that, lacking any pretense to realism, constructed a chilling caution regarding impending nuclear calamity. “Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning” did not qualify as a particularly gratifying picture, but it did incorporate a fractious, reflective war-room debate regarding which preemptive measures, if any, the President should undertake, during the unsettling event of a superpowered A.I. villain seizing dominion over the world’s nuclear stockpiles. In its own outlandish manner, the film seized upon the sum of anxieties that “A House of Dynamite” endeavors to address: the horrors of unrestrained proliferation, the ambiguities encompassing how adversaries and allies alike would react, and the amplifying likelihood of global catastrophe. Precisely how credible any facet of it remained, I cannot ascertain; the crux resided in its perceived credibility, due to the director and co-writer Christopher McQuarrie willing it, with unapologetic movie-movie zeal, into the fabric of vividly conceived fiction. Bigelow and Oppenheim appear zealous to craft something exceeding mere amusement, and subsequently, culminate with something notably less. ♦
Sourse: newyorker.com
