The expectations surrounding A House of Dynamite, Kathryn Bigelow’s new and highly anticipated film, were understandably stratospheric. After military tension and psychological analysis masterworks like The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, the prospect of Bigelow returning to a theme of war and existential crisis — dealing with the nuclear threat in real time — was instantly captivating. With a cast full of established stars and emerging talents, my curiosity was only tempered by a few “warnings” already circulating among peers, though, personally, that only piqued my interest further.
It’s imperative to start with what the movie does absolutely brilliantly: its first act. Bigelow wastes no time on preambles and thrusts us into the center of the crisis: an unidentified intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is detected and projected to hit Chicago in just 19 minutes. This initial segment, focused on the figures of Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation) in the White House Situation Room and Major Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos, In the Heights) at Fort Greely, Alaska, is a masterclass in high-voltage cinema. The tension is palpable, suffocating, and immediate.
What distinguishes this act from other countdown suspense thrillers is the temporal consistency. In films of this genre, the actual countdown timer is often a neglected narrative tool, where screen minutes don’t correspond to the story’s actual timeline. Here, the filmmaker forces us to feel every second. The 19 minutes on the clock seem to stretch and contract, reflecting the dizzying speed with which millions of lives need to be considered, decisions need to be debated, and defense systems need to be activated. It’s an intense experience, sustained by nerve-wracking performances, and it establishes the stakes of A House of Dynamite superbly.
Technically, the score by Volker Bertelmann (All Quiet on the Western Front) stands out. Known for compositions that sometimes tend to dominate the narrative, Bertelmann delivers work here that’s simultaneously pulsating and notably more contained. The sound doesn’t smother the crisis; it amplifies it, acting as a frantic heartbeat that accompanies us as the uncertainty sets in. It’s a highly effective element in creating the immersive atmosphere, showing that Bigelow knows how to command sensory cinema like few others.
However, A House of Dynamite stumbles when it embraces its threefold format. After the breathtaking conclusion of the first act, we’re confronted with a title card that transports us to a new perspective — that of General Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts, Spotlight) at STRATCOM and other high-level officials. And here lies the decisive narrative deficit: the movie starts over.
The same 19 minutes are recounted, with much of the same dialogue and the same events, only seen from a different angle. The filmmaker and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim (Jackie) share a clear goal: instead of building a mystery or re-contextualizing the events, the reiteration serves to illustrate the sterility and inevitability of the situation. The missile is on its way, and the decision continues to be debated and remains unmade.
The excessive recounting of the same dialogues and failures, without revealing twists or crucial information that offers another context to the previous action, causes the excitement to dissipate completely. What was a high-voltage thriller transforms into an exercise in academic frustration. In the first act, I felt glued to my seat, but after its conclusion, the narrative momentum collapses, replaced by an endless, redundant cycle of the same story.
It’s crucial to emphasize that the core personal problem I have with A House of Dynamite isn’t its ambiguity or lack of narrative resolution — I understand and even appreciate Bigelow‘s intent. The filmmaker addresses the banality of nuclear existence, the way humanity has grown accustomed to living under the shadow of total annihilation, and how, when confronted with the unthinkable, the response is paralysis. The message is that the only response from the systems is uncertainty. The director’s thesis is, in fact, impeccably executed…
But cinema is, above all, an art of figures and emotional experience. If the goal is to repeat the same message over 112 minutes without giving the viewer a single element worthy of emotional investment, the film fails in its function as a feature-length work. The protagonists are mere thematic instruments without significant arcs. Their personal traits — a distant daughter, a sick son, a marriage proposal yet to be made — seem like a basic ‘checklist’ to fill the screenplay.
‘A-listers’ like Idris Elba (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom) and Jared Harris (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), who should be the emotional anchors of the climax, are reduced to little more than repeated appearances or, in the case of Kaitlyn Dever (The Last of Us), luxury cameos, serving only to punctuate the same cycle of anxiety. If the essence of the movie is human fallibility, that fallibility needs to be explored through difficult choices — not through the mere reiteration of the same “what if” scenario.
We’re facing a classic and complex cinematographic case where the line between artistic intent and practical execution is extremely uneven. A House of Dynamite is an intellectually stimulating essay on nuclear terror and bureaucratic impotence. It’s a technical triumph, possessing one of the most tense and immersive first acts of the year. However, its rigid triptych structure, by insisting on reincidence instead of progression or re-contextualization, exhausts the viewer’s patience and drains all the voltage Bigelow so skillfully built. Without compelling characters to follow and with a narrative that refuses to advance — even if for a noble thematic cause — the film becomes excessive and frustrating. It’s an experience where the filmmaker succeeds at what they set out to prove, but fails at what was needed to deliver a complete and satisfying movie.
Final Thoughts on A House of Dynamite
A House of Dynamite is the perfect definition of a film with brilliant intent but exhaustive execution. Kathryn Bigelow delivers an opening act of pure cinematic tension, technically and sensorially extraordinary, but its structure, divided into three acts that tell the same story, proves excessively redundant and draining, transforming the suspense thriller into an academic essay that gradually loses the viewer’s attention. In the end, we’re left with the hammered message that the most devastating threat isn’t the nuclear explosion, but rather the human uncertainty in the face of the abyss.
Rating: C-
A House of Dynamite is now playing on Netflix.
Learn more about the film, including how to watch it, at the official website for the title.
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