I’m really struggling to determine where I land on “A House of Dynamite.” On one hand, it sports one of the most riveting, tension filled, anxiety driven first hours I’ve seen in a long time. On the other, it’s a borrowed hybrid of better films and the longer it goes on the less and less effective everything becomes. Not only does it struggle to answer any of the questions in poses – be it intentional or not – leaving you wondering just what the hell any of it means, but it also concludes with one of the most baffling endings of the year. These flaws that fester the further and further away we get from its initial premise allow for other flaws to surface, and rather than strapping itself to a missile poised for an explosion, it malfunctions halfway through its journey and lands with a dud rather than a destructive cinematic force you won’t forget. It has all of the makings to be the next great war room thriller but squanders it away by deescalating the tension quickly for nothing and ending with a whimper.
It’s a head scratcher, and it honestly shouldn’t be given “A House of Dynamite” is pretty straightforward in its premise. On a seemingly normal day, a nuclear missile is detected on radar heading towards the United States. The original is unknown, sending the White House, the military, and the situation room into a frenzy to identify the source, determine if the threat is real, and find a solution to take out the missile before it erases Chicago. And they have to do all of this in 20 minutes, as that’s the time they have before impact. On paper, “A House of Dynamite“” sounds like exactly the kind of tense thriller we crave and love, a simple race against time and an extraordinary situation with no easy answers or solutions. It’s essentially the plot of “Fail Safe” and the narrative structure of “Vantage Point,” as it switches different perspectives with each 20 minute countdown, some war hungry characterizations straight out of “Dr. Strangelove,” and the score from “Conclave.” Yes, the EXACT score used to make selecting a Pope riveting is also used to make a bomb heading towards Chicago equally as intense.
Add to all of that a stacked cast including Rebecca Ferguson (“Dune“), Idris Elba, Anthony Ramos, Gabriel Basso, Moses Ingram, Greta Lee (“Tron: Ares“), Jason Clarke, Tracy Letts, Wila Fitzgerald, Jared Harris, and Tony winner Renée Elise Goldsberry (“Hamilton“). With Oscar winning director Kathryn Bigelow at the helm, “A House of Dynamite” is a recipe for excellence. The problem is that it’s good until it isn’t, and once Noah Oppenheim’s script starts to show its cracks – much like the premise of building a house made of dynamite – everything implodes instead of explodes. And those heavily borrowed aforementioned films become a detriment rather than inspiration, reminding you that all of them did it better and this is only strong on the surface. Its baffling structure reveals the even more confounding editing choices and eventually exposes the nothing burger foundation the good ideas are built on. Further still, the unearned ambiguous ending only exacerbates the feeling of emptiness when the credits roll. It all just leaves you confused – not in a way that sparks discussion about differing conclusions and speculation – but more of why in the world did we have to do this in the first place?
It’s such a shame because that first 30-40 minutes really got my heart racing. “A House of Dynamite” launches forward with propulsive energy that feels undeniable and locks you in completely. But the minute we leave the situation room all of that starts to unravel. More and more characters get introduced – so many it is nearly impossible to keep up and most if not all of the threads are left hanging in the balance – and more and more plot threads keep getting pulled to the point that the whole ball of yarn so tightly wound initially spirals out and gets completely undone. Bigelow is a great director, but her choices here don’t put her strengths forward consistently.
The manic editing by Kirk Baxter gets less and less coherent as the tension continues to deflate, and the film becomes so sprawling we never spend more than 30 seconds with any give person. If all of “A House of Dynamite” was the first hour, it would probably be one of the best thrillers of its kind and the return of Bigelow after 8 years away would be more universally celebrated.
There isn’t even enough meat on the bones for it to be political or say anything about our government or procedures for external threats. Sure, you could read the tea leaves and come away thinking maybe it’s a commentary on the fragility of safety from catastrophic events and that most people in power really don’t know what to do in unthinkable situations and that all our preparedness has only lead to a global standoff where everyone has made a house of dynamite (an actual on the nose explanation of the euphemism is said by Alba himself in film) and one match brings it all down. That may be there, but even as I write it, it feels like a stretch. It simply attempts too many things without saying anything for itself, leaving it in a sort of limbo where its highs are rocket ships in space but the lows are scouring the bottom of the Titanic.
Sadly, it’ll fit right at home on Netflix, lost in the shuffle of queues with a huge first weekend pop but much like the film itself will ultimately be forgotten. That honestly sucks, because a Bigelow flick should be an event worthy of the theater. Instead, it’s a film that simply can’t sustain its own early success, and becomes a film no one will remember in a few days.
That said, I can’t stop thinking about that first hour and how good it is. So maybe there’s hope for “A House of Dynamite” yet, as I would easily rewatch that first story over and over again and just turn it off when we leave the situation room. I don’t know what that means for the movie or even this review, but it certainly left me conflicted, and not in a good way. I didn’t hate it, but it’s also not good and I don’t entirely know what to do with a film like that.
Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars
“A House of Dynamite” is playing in select theaters and will be on Netflix October 24th. You can watch the trailer below.
