An unknown nuclear missile is coming right for America and the United States government scrambles to stop it in the newest thriller from Kathryn Bigelow.
Fail-Safe is an all-time great political thriller from 1964 about all sides of the United States federal government mobilizing to stop its own military from carrying out mass destruction after a technological malfunction triggers an order for a nuclear strike on Russia, driven by captivating performances from an all-star cast, gripping pacing and riveting storytelling from screenwriter Walter Bernstein and director Sidney Lumet. Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow does have the filmmaking chops to match that film as far as building tension and emotional stakes with her latest A House of Dynamite, but failures in some writing aspects of the material she was given prevent her new Netflix original from reaching the same level as Lumet’s masterpiece, despite the best efforts from her work in the director’s chair and her massive ensemble.
The concept of A House of Dynamite is essentially Rashomon meets Fail-Safe in that this thriller takes place over a 20-minute real time span, but is told three times from different perspectives. The first of these takes place in the White House’s situation room, where Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) works as a senior officer monitoring threats to the country when she and her team notice an unidentified nuclear missile has been launched into the air and is heading toward the United States. She makes contact with Major Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos) who first discovered the missile at Fort Greely in Alaska with the end goal of stopping the missile before it obliterates its target and triggers worldwide nuclear war.
The second viewpoint of this event comes from another military base where General Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts) and his team react to the mysterious launch by reaching out to NSA agent Ana Park (Greta Lee) for ideas on where the launch originated, while also urging the President of the United States (Idris Elba) to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike. Only Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington (Gabriel Basso) and Admiral Mark Miller (Jason Clarke) are there to contact the Russian foreign minister about his country’s possible involvement with the looming destruction and demand the US President not respond to the ominous nuke. The third standpoint we get is from the POTUS himself beginning his day at a shootaround with basketball phenom Angel Reese until he receives the worst news about his country.
Kathryn Bigelow mastered creating harrowing intimacy with her social thriller Detroit, and her work there is right at home in A House of Dynamite. The handheld photography adds a raw realism inside the situation room and amplifies both the tense enormity and high emotional stakes of the situation with uneasy rocking movements and subtle crash zooms from medium shots to closeups on a given character, while Volker Bertelmann’s unsettling score full of screeching violins and a leitmotif best described as a political thriller spin on John Williams’ iconic theme for Jaws brings up the rear in adding more riveting drama as events unfold.
Bigelow also put together a huge ensemble for A House of Dynamite, and the cast members maximize their screentime with strong performances; most notably Rebecca Ferguson who keeps Olivia’s composure during the most stressful day in her life for the sake of being professional with great restraint, only to show her humanity and internal concern for her family with remarkable progression as the seconds until impact tick literally right in front of her. What’s also worth mentioning is that the script does a solid job of streamlining all the types of weapons the United States Army uses as well as the types of departments to make their capabilities and purposes easy for casual audiences to understand.
Unfortunately, the script is also one of the biggest hindrances to the story of A House of Dynamite, simply because it isn’t the sharpest material with which Bigelow has worked. This original screenplay is Noah Oppenheim’s first narrative he’s written since Jackie, and the heavy-handedness of the dialogue here makes it easy to speculate he’s had a lot on his mind since stepping down as President of NBC News in 2023. Throughout the second act, characters rattle off the last few years of American current events like they’re checking off boxes on a list, such as an instance where Ana Park proposes that the missile was launched by an artificial intelligence-aided glitch, and another one where Major General Steven Kyle (Gbenga Akinnagbe) suggests that Russia was behind the impending strike, and then goes on to describe Vladimir Putin’s alleged war crimes this decade in the vein of a Wikipedia summary.
A House of Dynamite even starts with a title card that details the fact that global powers once worked together to decrease the supply of nuclear weapons on planet Earth, ending with a title card that reads in all capital letters: “That era is now over,” as if to begin with the nuance of a sledgehammer to the face. The movie also fails to say anything new about the government and its inner workings, instead relying on previously conceived stereotypes, from the army’s innate hunger to wreak destruction on our foes to the President being set up for failure in this life-or-death situation. What’s worth noting again is that the ensemble is big to the point where a plethora of talented actors like Jonah Hauer-King, Willa Fitzgerald, Renee Elise Goldsberry and Kaitlyn Dever feel wasted in their roles, given their lack of screentime. It can also be debated that the film’s ending builds up to nothing once we see the POTUS’ side of the story on this day.
Bigelow’s latest is not without merit, but the script could have used another rewrite or two before Netflix gave it the green light. The exposition and name-dropping of topics are egregious enough to take away from the realism and raw power of the movie’s main players in the cast and everything Bigelow does to add emotional depth and suspense. For that reason, this political thriller is worth streaming only for fans of one or more actors in the troupe Kathryn Bigelow has assembled or die-hard enthusiasts of the director herself. Otherwise, A House of Dynamite starts out with promise, but quickly fizzles out into a disappointing dud.