‘A House of Dynamite’ Review

Kathryn Bigelow has for decades been one of film’s premier builders of suspense, whether applied to vampires, surfing bank robbers, or the men and women hunting Osama bin Laden. In ‘A House of Dynamite’, Bigelow flexes this skill to great effect. From the opening shots, we are brought along in a slow build up of tension and anxiety as a nuclear missile is detected entering US airspace with a projected impact in 19 minutes, bringing in characters and locations spanning the globe all unified in their response efforts with ever increasing stakes.

The story enjoys this build up so much, that at a certain point it stops, goes back to the beginning of this 19 minute window, and does it again.

And again.

And by rehashing the same nineteen minutes from various perspectives, the film does less to amplify the suspense than to diminish the emotional and visceral impact such that by the time the end credits roll, the viewer leaves frustrated and let down despite all of the incredible craft on display.

While this is certainly an ensemble piece, which each role played by recognizable and talented performers, every segment has one primary character that drives the action. In the first section, the strongest of the film, we follow Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson), an officer in the White House Situation Room. In the second section, we follow Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington (Gabriel Basso). And in the final section, we follow the President of the United States (Idris Elba). The sequencing of these segments is coherent, as we start with the character who finds out about the threat earliest, and each successive segment follows a character who learns of the impending risk just a little later than the preceding character. And yet, by resetting the clock again and again, the tension is water down a little more each time.

‘A House of Dynamite’ is a form of competence porn that doubles as a stringent warning against nuclear proliferation. When a character like Jason Clarke’s senior Situation Room official is introduced, there’s a brief moment where you think he might be made out as a bumbling, incompetent bureaucrat who undermines his more qualified subordinates. But as the situation develops, he ends up bringing calm and clarity to the war room, advising with tact while nurturing and supporting every individual to trust in their own expertise. Not a single person is bad at their job, not a single person is a bad guy.

And this makes the nuclear escalation all the more terrifying. Nobody in this film wants to unleash a nuclear arsenal, nobody wants to lose an American city. And yet even when these smart, competent people do everything right, everything by the book, the reality of nuclear weapons has a tendency to force rapid decision making of increasing danger. When some characters argue for a preemptive nuclear response, even before knowing the culprit, their arguments come not from fear and anger, but from measured reasoning, more horrifying for how clinical it is despite the fatal consequences.

The acting is strong throughout, even as the sheer number of British performers playing high level American government officials is a touch distracting. Bigelow’s skill with suspense, her fine attention to the minutia of the government’s logistical response to a real world threat is stunning in its clarity and as thrilling as any action movie despite not a single gunshot being fired. And yet by the film’s very structure, the overarching tension is diluted and the film as a whole becomes frustrating in its repetition. By the time we reached the third segment, introducing the human backstories of characters as of yet unseen, I was eager to reach some sort of pay off as no new information, no new emotions, were being offered. By the time the end credits rolled, stunning in their anticlimax, I found myself more irritated than satisfied.

‘A House of Dynamite’ is an ultimate process over results film, in that the filmmakers care so much about the step by step government response to a nuclear threat, about the various layers of government and how well meaning people come together to apply all their expertise to a civilizational crisis, that the ultimate pay off is hand waved away. In a film so committed to every fine detail of the journey to nuclear response, the lack of a vision for the story’s future is glaring and troublesome. While the message the movie seeks to deliver, that nuclear weapons have a tendency to escalate any conflict into the apocalypse, is crystal clear, the message would have already been delivered if it ended after the first segment.

With great performances and impeccable direction, the repetitive structure and exasperating ending unfortunately render ‘A House of Dynamite’ a deeply flawed film, a whole that is decidedly less than the sum of its parts.

A House of Dynamite
Rated R for language.
Running Time: 1 hour and 52 minutes

Director Kathryn Bigelow
Writers Noah Oppenheim
Stars Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts, Anthony Ramos, Moses Ingram, Jonah Hauer-King, Greta Lee, Jason Clarke
Rating R
Running Time 112 Minutes
Genres Disaster, Drama, Thriller