Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Writer: Noah Oppenheim
Stars: Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Gabriel Basso
Synopsis: When a single, unattributed missile is launched at the United States, a race begins to determine who is responsible and how to respond.
There is no way to describe the immense disappointment of watching Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite. The film is loaded with talent, making it feel like yet another Netflix streaming Ponzi scheme—where a legendary filmmaker like Bigelow signs on and the rest follow, mindlessly assuming the project must be on the verge of something spectacular. I mean, why wouldn’t a global political thriller on the brink of domestic collapse from the director of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty possibly go wrong?
And for the first act of A House of Dynamite, the film is a suspenseful thriller with rare white-knuckle tension. A real armrest grabber, featuring Rebecca Ferguson, who plays Olivia Walker, leading a group of duty workers and National Security Council (NSC) staffers trying to prevent the destruction of a major city in the United States. She runs point for the military brass, including her boss, Mark Miller (Jason Clarke). It appears to be a typical day when Major Danile Gonzalez (Twisters’ Anthony Ramos) and his team at a military base detect an incoming warhead.
They oversee the ground-based interceptor (GBI) missiles designed to neutralize nuclear threats—an idea that sounds great on paper but, in reality, is like trying to hit a bullet with a bullet. Olivia’s job is to connect communications with prominent political figureheads: the president (Heads of State’s Idris Elba), the secretary of defense (Mad Men’s Jared Harris), a general with a colossal ego and a penchant for hubris (Saturday Night’s Tracy Letts), and the deputy national security adviser (The Night Agent’s Gabriel Basso).
One criticism making its way around A House of Dynamite is that it serves as propaganda for humanizing government officials. However, once you watch, that feels misguided, like any thriller where lives hang in the balance, such as any episode of 24. The film utilizes public figures with high-profile families and personal stakes to heighten the drama. The film was written by Noah Oppenheim (Netflix’s Zero Day), former president of NBC News and executive producer of The Today Show. Oppenheim is a proven talent, with a strong résumé that includes an Academy Award nomination for his screenplay for Jackie.
The issue is the downward spiral of Oppenheim’s career since hitting awards paydirt, riding on the coattails of Natalie Portman and Pablo Larraín’s decadence. Here, Oppenheim has written a film told through the perspectives of three or four characters involved in a dangerous incident that morning. The movie, in fact, employs the Rashomon effect, replaying a twenty- to thirty-minute sequence from multiple viewpoints. This should be an intriguing storytelling device, elevating a gripping thriller into genuine human drama. Ideally, the structure would highlight perceptions, competing truths, and biases—revealing the hidden shades of gray, like the heart of an artichoke, with each layer peeled back to uncover the complexities of deception and morally ambiguous choices.
However, as compelling as the film’s first section is, the rest fizzles out like a faulty fuse. Each subsequent segment rehashes the same events without revelation — mostly watching protagonists break protocol to call loved ones and warn of an impending attack. Even the most intriguing third-act moment, Kaitlyn Dever’s arrival as the secretary of defense’s daughter, carries no weight. The finale is so lackluster that it feels like a scrapped streaming series hastily repackaged as a movie, reminiscent of the long-running rumor that David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive began life as an unpicked ABC TV pilot.
A House of Dynamite is a remarkable disappointment and one of the most overrated films in recent memory. While the opening ignites the hairs on your arms, the rest of the film wallows in self-plagiarism, as if Oppenheim simply cuts and pastes each act into an endless political Groundhog Day that no viewer can escape. Frankly, I found myself wishing the bomb would bring the whole experience to an early, merciful end.
Bigelow and Oppenheim’s film is pure political fluff that leads to and ends with absolutely no payoff, being predictable and contrived because it chooses to be.
You can watch A House of Dynamite in select theaters on October 10th before streaming exclusively on Netflix on October 24th!
