Are you ready for doomsday? Directory Kathryn Bigelow’s latest makes us think about the unthinkable.
A House of Dynamite
Starring Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Gabriel Basso, Tracy Letts & Greta Lee
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
Rated PG-13
In theaters Friday, Oct. 10 / On Netflix Friday, Oct. 24
As an intercontinental ballistic missile bears down on the United States, everyone scrambles to find out who fired it and what to do before it reaches its target in about 20 minutes. That’s the ultra-high-stakes situation in A House of Dynamite, which plops a bona fide doomsday scenario into our laps and forces us to think about the unthinkable.
Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty) expertly tightens the screws and amps up the tension with every taught, fraught second, inventively overlapping timelines to show us how different politicians, advisors, generals, military personnel and Washington insiders grapple with the toughest decision they’ve ever made, from the U.S. President (Idris Elba) on down the chain of command.
Confusion, dread and disbelief abound. Who launched the missile, headed straight for Chicago? Was it Russia? North Korea? China? Why didn’t America’s intercept-and-destroy defense network work? “That’s what $50 million buys us!??” barks the incredulous Secretary of Defense (Jared Harris). Should the U.S. makes its own retaliatory strike, before it’s too late? What VIPs and essential personnel will be evacuated to safety deep inside a mountain bunker, and who’ll be left behind? Will a governmental communications expert (Rebecca Ferguson) ever see her husband and young son again?
And what about the 10 million citizens expected to die when the missile hits its target? The horrific specter of all-out nuclear Armageddon looms large, with one bomb likely to start a chain reaction of mutually assured destruction. As one character notes, we’re living in a house full of dynamite.
The impressive ensemble cast includes Greta Lee, Anthony Ramos, Gabriel Brasso, Jason Clarke, Kaitlyn Dever and Tracy Letts. How does WNBA basketball star Angel Reese fit into things? Or a date with an Appleby’s waitress, elephants in Kenya, Civil War re-enactors or young soldier-sentries standing guard at a remote Alaskan outpost? The movie unnervingly depicts the wide-ranging ripple effect, across a spectrum of geography and life, about to be affected in the worst possible way.
It’s like Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant Dr. Strangelove, but without any of that 1964 film’s scathing satire—this is deadly serious stuff. And it takes on even more gravity with current events being what they are, global politics fraught with growing tensions, and nuclear proliferation a very real thing and a very real threat. How would today’s leaders—generals, cabinet members, and yes, the president—respond if faced with that situation?
And consider this unnerving premise from the film: Despite America’s expansive, high-tech defense systems, such an attack is well within the realm of possibility.
In one early scene, Rebecca Ferguson’s character toys with a tiny plastic dinosaur, handed to her by her son before she left for work that fateful morning. As she wonders if life as she knows it may be ending, that little prehistoric creature comes to represent an even more discomforting mega scenario, one in which all humankind might very well become extinct, extinguished like the dinosaurs. And, in a grim irony, done in by our devices.
A House of Dynamite is a sobering countdown, a colossally jarring wake-up call about the fragility of our very existence…and about a time—and a day, in a span of minutes—that we can only hope never comes.
—Neil Pond
The Media Tourist 