Movie Review: Nuclear nightmares in Kathryn Bigelow’s ‘House of Dynamite’
When in the process of relaunching your directing career sometimes the best method is to go back to basics which is essentially what Kathryn Bigelow s A House of Dynamite has done this month Her first release since Detroit nearly a decade ago doesn t go all the way back to her genre roots a la Near Dark or Point Break as countless of her fans would like her to do it does bring her back to the familiar territory that took her to Oscar glory with The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty A House of Dynamite has a very basic simple plot structure that is practically an excuse to remind movie viewers that this directing veteran has still got it In a matter of just minutes we see how the U S establishment and military act when a rogue nuclear missile is spotted and flying directly at Chicago Situation Room Officer Olivia Walker Rebecca Ferguson Major Daniel Gonzalez Anthony Ramos Admiral Mark Miller Jason Clarke General Anthony Brady Tracy Letts and the POTUS himself Idris Elba are selected of the professionals frantically hurrying to agree on what the best strategy is to block the attack A House of Dynamite is written by Noah Oppenheim and has one of the best casts of on-screen talent this year including Greta Lee Jared Harris Moses Ingram Jonah Hauer-King Willa Fitzgerald Kyle Allen and Kaitlyn Dever On a purely technical level Bigelow delivers a finely tuned suspense thriller that she s already proven she can direct in her sleep The tone acting editing pacing and staging are tight as basically a modernization of Sidney Lumet s classic Fail-Safe If there s any reason for the lukewarm response to the new film it s not so much because of the propaganda accusations Bigelow received from particular a decade ago because of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty It s more because there isn t really much of a theme other than nuclear weapons are really scary We don t even get a real answer to where the missile is coming from The characters theorize China Russia North Korea or an independent source a glitch in the system or a false alarm The film portrays every single person working for the country with the best intentions making the movie feel like a modern fantasy but also terrifying because of its subject Wouldn t it be nice if everyone in the White House was so utterly competent I like to think so and so do the creators of A House of Dynamite But this then leads to the biggest complaint from viewers the ending Since this is Fail-Safe all over there isn t a happy ending here and while that can be effective and appropriate the final upshot lands more like an afterthought than a message
