Cert – 15, Run-time – 1 hour 52 minutes, Director – Kathryn Bigelow
A nuclear missile has suddenly been launched from an unknown place directed at the United States. With 18 minutes until it strikes; is it real, and what should be done if it is?
With A House Of Dynamite Kathryn Bigelow channels a similar uncertain, deadly, countdown-based tension to the defusal sequences in her Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker. However, in the case of her latest it’s much more difficult to defuse a nuclear missile, or, it seems, to know how to deal with it. The United States has just 18 minutes to work out if the launch is real or not and if so how to respond to it, including working out where it’s come from and where it will land.
Tension rises the more uncertainty and its different contexts rise over the course of the opening 35-40 minutes. Shifting into panic as the digital clock rapidly morphs closer to 0 with still not a proper plan in place as to how to protect the population in such a short amount of time – alert notifications on phones only add to the tension and seem to largely be seen by government employees and officials who are already caught up in the fear, whilst trying to piece things together. For much of this time we’re based in the White House Situation Room, with attempts to contact the President (Idris Elba) trying to be made. From there we eventually switch to other linked locations and perspectives seeing more details of the US government’s responses over the course of the same countdown.
Diminishing returns is somewhat the case for the following switches in perspective as they tend to cover the same events just with a few more details in a different room. One of the best examples of the tension being brought back involves Gabriel Basso’s Deputy National Security Advisor frantically asking and negotiating with Russian ministers for assurances after time has already been lost trying to go through building security. During these instances which aren’t really heard of or glimpsed prior the film brings back detail and interest instead of feeling like a slight repeat which the second and third run-throughs certainly suffer from.
There are still interesting ideas at play, and a lingering sense of fear and dread around the central theme as a whole, but the tension isn’t quite as strong as it is through the more fluid escalations of our introduction to this world – especially with just how many players we see and hear from this time around. Bigelow does a good job of bringing in personal emotion for certain characters – one instance involving a father calling his daughter particularly comes to mind – even if the moments are brief and sometimes rub slightly against the pacing of the rest of the film.
As a whole the structure of A House Of Dynamite feels as if it holds it back. While everything happening at once would likely lead to a longer, busier, more chaotic film it would perhaps feel more solid with continuing tension than in the state of the finished film where we see the same (or at least largely similar) events three times. There’s still effect to be found beyond the first set of sequences, especially ones that try to lean into the emotional and moral side of things more, but the tension isn’t quite as effective as beforehand and that’s the biggest issue with a thriller of panic such as this.
By splitting A House Of Dynamite’s events across three perspective cycles the tension in the latter familiar instances feels held back, despite Bigelow’s focus on emotional and moral elements. There’s still suspense and panic to be found, but certainly not on the level of the strength of the first third.
Just A Little Bit Random 