A House of Dynamite

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"A House of Dynamite is the perfect definition of a film with brilliant intent but exhaustive execution.

Kathryn Bigelow delivers an opening act of pure cinematic tension, technically and sensorially extraordinary, but its structure, divided into three acts that tell the same story, proves excessively redundant and draining, transforming the suspense thriller into an academic essay that gradually loses the viewer's attention.

In the end, we're left with the hammered message that the most devastating threat isn't the nuclear explosion, but rather the human uncertainty in the face of the abyss."

Rating: C-

Nuclear conflict is one of those subjects that’s almost too big to think about despite the possibility of its occurrence being something we can’t and shouldn’t ignore. Unfortunately, then, it’s frustrating when a film comes along that might help to shed some light on the subject but that leaves viewers not entirely clear what to make of it. Such is the case with this clumsily constructed offering from Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow. The picture, told from different perspectives in three overlapping chapters, follows the developments associated with a single mysteriously launched nuclear missile headed for the US mainland and the efforts to determine who fired it and how it might be contained. The first chapter primarily chronicles the efforts of the military and the staff in the White House Situation Room. The second looks at the event from the perspective of Strategic Command. And the third follows the impossible decision-making process left in the hands of the President (Idris Elba). Over the course of these interlocking segments, viewers are introduced to the gut-wrenching issues thrust upon the Secretary of Defense (Jared Harris), the head of Strategic Command (Tracy Letts), the Deputy National Security Advisor (Gabriel Basso) and the Situation Room chief (Jason Clarke) as they attempt to sort out what to do, determinations that are fundamentally greater than any of them are capable of addressing realistically, let alone satisfactorily. It’s a frightening scenario, to be sure, as the missile comes ever closer to striking its target, Chicago, a calamity projected at killing upwards of 10 million. Regrettably, though, the format chosen to tell this story does little to clarify matters for audiences. Given the many characters and diverse locations involved in the narrative, as well as the pervasive jargon, numerous shorthand acronyms and underexplained policy options that pepper the needlessly complicated screenplay, one practically needs a scorecard or flo...