What do the last moments before World War III look like? There’s plenty of near misses and speculation throughout human history, so why not try to distill that anxiety into a film warning us about nuclear annihilation? Unfortunately for us, Kathryn Bigelow’s first film since 2017 tries to balance “government officials being great at their jobs” with “humanity will doom us all,” with little success. All that she manages to do is make the United States government look even stupider than it is. A House of Dynamite would cower in fear at the imagery of Threads.
A House of Dynamite stretches the last twenty minutes before WWIII into thirty minute chunks, betraying the concept immediately. How can a film be accurate if you can’t even work the ticking clock? Each time we flash back to a different mess of characters, learning precious little more than we knew at the very beginning. Much of the film is a Zoom call repeated ad nauseum, just featuring a different part of the screen. While Rebecca Ferguson handles her section well as an official keeping everyone around her calm as an unidentified missile speeds towards Chicago, the film’s other ostensible leads don’t fare as well. Gabriel Basso is fine as an NSA deputy in over his head, but he doesn’t make the impression a young star should. It feels like he’s here because Netflix already has his W-9. Idris Elba is laughable as the somewhat boorish POTUS, a confused mess of a character that does not feel like any real world analogue. I suppose he’s like if GWB was Obama..?
Nothing good can come of mapping these people onto the real government. What world is being portrayed? One where the government is staffed by competent professionals, not hideous freaks from beyond the grave? A world where these competents still fail, allowing the world to fall into nuclear oblivion? Is that supposed to make us feel better? If, as Bigelow claims, the film is a “warning,” why do we not see any aftermath? All we get is a blinking dot on a glowing screen. If you’ve got Kaitlyn Dever in Chicago, you should at least show her melting. But the film reads extremely cheap; Netflix may have even less money that we assumed. A random episode of 24 looks better than this.
I’m not sure what Bigelow should do next besides “knock it off.” A House of Dynamite fails on all dramatic levels, so it’s not quite the triumphant return a Best Director winner might usually have. She’s certainly never getting back to her Near Dark days, but would today’s film landscape even be able to support that? Like many directors, she’s stuck in the development grind, but we might be better off if she stays there.
A House of Dynamite
2025
112 min
Dir. Kathryn Bigelow
Opens Friday, 10/10 @ Coolidge Corner Theatre, Kendall Square Cinema, and West Newton Cinema
Streaming on Netflix Friday 10/24
