“A House of Dynamite” is Electrifying and Terrifying
The premise of “A House of Dynamite,” the new film by Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow, is irresistible. A long-range nuclear missile is discovered by the US government in the air over the Pacific Ocean, inbound toward a major American city. No one knows where it was fired from, and they don’t know if they can stop it. The president has twenty minutes to decide what to do next.
If there’s one director you want in charge of a plot that’s compelling, it’s Bigelow. Her Oscar is for 2008’s “The Hurt Locker,” but to me her masterpiece is “Zero Dark Thirty,” a movie about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden that they literally had to rewrite at the last minute when he was killed as production was about to begin. Thirteen years later, she hasn’t lost a step when it comes to crafting tense, tightly edited stories about global conflict.
Oscar-winner Volker Bertelmann’s instantly iconic score is seared into my brain. The cast is stacked with great actors, but the standout is Gabriel Basso, playing a young national security advisor who tries to be a voice of reason in a sea of panic.
The two most controversial aspects of this movie will be the structure and the ending, but they’re also what make it so interesting. The twenty or so minutes that the missile is in the air plays out three times, each from the perspective of a different group of characters. Some viewers might find this repetitive, but if you’re paying close attention you’ll start asking questions that will later be answered in fulfilling ways that a linear narrative wouldn’t offer.
The ending of this movie will undoubtedly frustrate people, but it’s the right one. Nuclear proliferation is a house of dynamite the world has been building for decades. It’s one we all live in. We have no way to leave. And no one knows what to do about it. You won’t see a scarier movie this October.
Rating: 8/10
“A House of Dynamite” is now playing in select theaters and premiers on Netflix on Friday, October 24th.
