By Reed Ripley
A House of Dynamite
Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow
Starring: Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson,
Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts
Thriller/Drama | R | 1 hr 52 min
I can’t believe I’m going to sit here and say I wish I would’ve seen a nuclear bomb drop, but here I am. Do I really want to have witnessed the utter destruction and oblivion that A House of Dynamite’s big bad, nuclear bomb hurtling directly toward Chicago would have wrought? Of course not, but it would have at least provided some sort of resolution, something that A House of Dynamite condescendingly avoids.
This is one of the most glaring examples of a film being less than the sum of its parts in recent memory. It’s got an all-star cast, a brilliant director, and an attention to detail and set design that should probably bring in an Oscar or two, despite itself. It’s the writing that so frustratingly derails things, and it starts with the structure. A House of Dynamite is essentially three 30–40-minute mini-movies that tell the same story—the United States military command’s reaction and protocol following the launch of an ICBM from an indeterminate Pacific location.
The first 45 minutes, which follows Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) as she runs point in the White House Situation Room, is brilliant and truly thrilling. The ICBM launches and the United States runs its counter operations, all framed with the highest leverage Zoom call you’ll ever see among the President (Idris Elba), the Secretary of Defense (Jared Harris), and various other decision makers. But, as soon as we’re 30 seconds from the impact and the President is asked for the orders that will decide humanity’s fate, it cuts to black, and we rewind to the beginning, this time focusing on Tracy Letts’ General Anthony Brady and Gabriel Basso’s Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington.
It’s a jarring and unsatisfying transition, and all the wonderfully tense buildup immediately dissipates. And then, another 40ish minutes later, it happens again, this time finally switching to the perspective of the Secretary of Defense and the President. That kind of structure can certainly work (famous examples include Rashomon and Pulp Fiction), but it takes a deft pen and deep acting work to pull off each perspective in such a short time.
And oh yeah, the film still needs to find resolve, and that’s A House of Dynamite’s ultimate failure. Plenty of narrative shortcomings can ultimately be forgiven if a film pulls off its ending; however, A House of Dynamite not only fails to deliver a resolution, but it actively avoids it. Spoiler warning here, but the film abruptly stops right as the President is about to issue his order and before the bomb hits (or maybe doesn’t hit) Chicago, and the audience is left with no clue as to what happened.
I’m sure there are plenty out there who will argue that’s exactly the point—the fact of whether the bomb dropped and the nature of the resulting physical and political fallout simply don’t matter because the drama is in the process of how we get there and how individual characters respond in the moment. That’s fine, but that only works if the characters work, and they don’t.
That’s where the script’s faults come bubbling up again—the film is obsessed with telling you “See, these are normal people just doing their jobs,” in order to manufacture the audience’s emotional connection to the circumstances. But it comes off as incredibly manipulative. For example, at seemingly every opportunity, the film goes out of its way to show a sick kid; a pregnant wife; a kids’ basketball camp; a planned engagement; a daughter in the blast zone; whatever it takes to force emotional stakes. It comes off so forced, and it makes it all the harder to buy into the characters when we have so little time with them, anyway.
It’s incredibly frustrating because again, A House of Dynamite’s technical and production achievements are certainly there. It’s simply that, if you’re going to retrace the steps of a nuclear strike twice, then you better provide some sort of resolution. It doesn’t have to be nuclear Armageddon, but it has to be something, and that something can’t be “isn’t potential nuclear war stressful.”
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I’m SO glad that it wasn’t just me that walked away terribly disappointed. Seriously, my thought afterwards was ‘well, that’s 2 hours of my life I’ve wasted.’
Two thumbs down