A House of Dynamite ★★★1/2
- 2filmcritics
- 5 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Availability: Showing widely in theaters nationally and internationally. On Netflix as of October 24. See JustWatch here for full online and purchase availability.
Rare, Medium or Well Done?
The backdrop for director Katherine Bigelow’s taut and chilling story of pending nuclear war is, remarkably, the complex and esoteric field of systems analysis. The field emerged in modern form in 1948 with the work of the Rand Corporation, amid Cold War concerns about the development and spread of nuclear weapons. In “A House of Dynamite” the system analyzed is the one formulated in the postwar era, updated and refined for the 21st century, a system designed to respond to, and to protect the United States from, a nuclear-armed missile launched by a foreign power.
Bigelow’s interrogation of that system takes the form of three separate, 30-40-minute episodes, each covering the 19+ minute period after a missile launch is detected somewhere in the Pacific. The missile’s trajectory anticipates a landing in the American Midwest. One would hope—indeed, expect—that at that critical moment the President of the United States would be apprised quickly of the facts of the situation and be in immediate contact with officials best suited to offer advice and counsel. But in Bigelow’s narrative, the decision to shoot down the incoming missile isn’t made by the President, but rather by some guy in a bunker at Fort Greeley, Alaska (“I’m the one in charge. I decide.”), and two of the military figures charged with tracking the missile experience crippling panic attacks—an early sign that human emotions rather than reason will be a factor in how the “system” functions.
Above, Fort Greeley, Alaska, where the mysterious missile
first crosses the radar of the so-far casual soldiers manning the bunker.
Scenes from the Fort Greeley bunker are cross-cut with developments at a command post in the White House, where the no-nonsense Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson), secure and self-assured in a powder blue blazer (it’s dress-down day), is coordinating the response. Yet Walker, too, is emotionally distracted; her son has a high fever, and she’s come to work with his favorite toy figurine, a dinosaur—a not so subtle reminder of what’s at stake for the human species.
Bigelow reminds us that a system designed to run like a Swiss watch is vulnerable to the quotidian.
In this and the two subsequent episodes, Bigelow reminds us that a system designed to run like a Swiss watch is vulnerable to the quotidian. In violation of protocol, personnel in many locations eat at their desks, sneak in their personal cell phones, chat about sports and engagement rings. The President, a blank screen on the monitors, should be talking to his National Security Adviser, who is in the midst of a colonoscopy; instead, he’ll get advice from Jake Baerington (Gabriel Basso), the young Deputy NSA, whose wife is pregnant. Ana Park (Greta Lee), the expert in North Korean affairs, is taking a day off with her son at a deafening Battle of Gettysburg reenactment. The Secretary of Defense (Jared Harris) is on the golf course.
Right, Major Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos), who at a critical moment is far from his station, incapacitated by a panic attack.
It would be ideal if the President were at the White House, but he’s shooting buckets with WNBA star Angel Reese at a high school basketball game (evoking George W. Bush reading to a second-grade class as the Twin Towers were hit). As the seconds ominously tick down, an overwhelmed POTUS (Idris Elba) is alone in a helicopter with the military aide (Jonah Hauer-King), who displays the color-coded notebook of retaliatory options that he describes to the President as “rare, medium, and well-done.” Would you like fries with that?
Much of the action focuses on a White House command center, where Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson, one of the ensemble of actors Bigelow uses) is in charge.
Anyone who’s been frustrated by dropped and spotty phone calls will understand that the technology so essential to the “system” isn’t always cooperative. Baerington, who wants to connect the President with Russian leadership, discovers that POTUS is not on the “right” kind of line. We learn that the chance of intercepting the incoming missile—“like hitting a bullet with a bullet” —is just 61%, stunning almost everyone, including the Secretary of Defense, whose daughter lives in the missile’s bullseye. The war-room screens designed to feature the most prominent officials are sometimes empty, because the principals are not connected to a video device. Incredibly, US satellites have somehow failed to capture the site of the launch of the incoming ICBM.
Reality intrudes on Reality.
Reality intrudes on Reality. In capturing the first element in that duality (personal concerns, technological failures), Bigelow, director of “The Hurt Locker” (2008) and “Zero Dark Thirty” (2012), is without peer. The fabric of the film—those overlapping, re-loaded episodes, touching on one another here and there, now and then, offer layers of understanding, adding to and refining our knowledge of the players and their strengths and weaknesses.
Bigelow’s methods are similar to others in contemporary cinema and often frustrating, as they abound in confusion, muddled dialogue, and intrusive sounds that drown out speech. Confusion derives too from characters representing agencies we barely care about, like the woman from FEMA (Moses Ingram) who seems only to run from one place to another.
The screenplay, by TV news producer Noah Oppenheim, is riveting and revealing, as when Baerington, having spoken at length to the Russian foreign minister and desperately wanting to avoid escalation, is asked by the President “what did he agree to?” “Nothing,” Baerington is forced to reply.
Perhaps intentionally—to avoid focus on a particular enemy, and to complicate the decision to be made—the facts are few.
The script fails, however, on the second element of the Reality sequence, the existential threat from overseas. Perhaps intentionally—to avoid focus on a particular enemy, and to complicate the decision to be made—the facts are few. There’s lots of talk of retaliation, and General Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts)—a central character without a backstory, without mention of a family—is an insistent advocate of preemptive retaliation. But against what country or entity? North Korea, with which there has been no communication, and whose ability to launch from under the sea is unknown? Russia, whose foreign minister denies responsibility? China, also in denial, though without testimony? Pakistan? A non-state actor or private company? Was the launch simply a mistake? If so, why hasn’t the responsible entity come forth and said so?
The hapless President may (or may not) be overdone. The survival of humans on the planet is dependent on a former basketball player who desperately seeks advice from the one person he seems to trust, his wife, who is on safari in Africa (cue the elephants). When loading the President and man-with-black-bag on the helicopter, an aide says, “I’ve served 3 Presidents. They’re all total narcissists. At least this one reads the newspapers.”
Decision-making on the basis of limited information is a staple of the social science literature. Here there’s so little to go on that any decision would seem irrational, even absurd. That’s the weakness of an otherwise superb film.
He says: Nobody does tension better than Katherine Bigelow.
She says: Scary, made even before we had a loose cannon in the White House and an inexperienced, incompetent Secretary of Defense.
Date: 2025
Director: Katherine Bigelow
Starring: Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts, Moses Ingram, Jonah Hauer-King, Greta Lee, Anthony Ramos
Country: United States
Language: English
Runtime: 112 minutes
Other Awards: 1 nomination (for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival) to date