What if you had 19 minutes before nuclear war kicked off? What could you possibly do to stop it? Or failing that, what unfinished business would you want to tackle? This is the nauseating question at the center of A House of Dynamite. Academy Award–winning director Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) teams with Zero Day writer Noah Oppenheim — and an all-star cast — to show what it might look like if one of the United States’ enemies launched a missile at one of our nation’s major cities.
In the blink of an eye, soldiers, politicians, and government officials go from having a totally run-of-the-mill day to participating in a moment that will define the lives of millions, in the U.S. and abroad. And all their decisions must happen in a 19-minute window.
Idris Elba stars as the president of the United States, while the rest of his team (and beyond) is brought to life by Rebecca Ferguson, Greta Lee, Anthony Ramos, Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, Moses Ingram, Jason Clarke, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Kaitlyn Dever, and Tracy Letts. But make no mistake, this is not the kind of American movie that cheers, “Here comes POTUS to save the world.”
Bigelow’s work, which ranges from the trippy Strange Days and the propulsive Point Break to the intense Zero Dark Thirty and the earnest Detroit, isn’t interested in feel-good fantasies. What she delivers with A House of Dynamite is a passionate and powerful call to disarm. But be warned, the movie around this message is nerve-shredding and pretty infuriating.
A House of Dynamite plays out a nightmare scenario in a tense triptych.
Credit: Eros Hoagland / Netflix
Bigelow’s latest film begins in Washington, D.C., on a sunny morning in which a flood of government workers casually go through security protocols to take up their positions at monitoring devices and computer screens. They carry baubles of their personal lives: an engagement ring ready to be proposed with, a small toy dinosaur from a flu-ish little boy, a cellphone ablaze with a photo of loved ones. These tokens of the world outside their cold situation rooms illustrate what each person here works for. Beyond the paycheck to cover the costs of apartments and doctors’ appointments, their edict to make the world a better place means keeping the U.S. safe for the pregnant wife, sick son, or estranged daughter who has no idea what the sausage of peacemaking looks like.
In a bustling first act, Oppenheim’s script efficiently sketches out an array of characters who collaborate across situation rooms, secured phone lines, and crowded video calls to handle any crisis that hits. Yet the main focus of this section is Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson), a mom who relishes playing with her kid and giving motherly advice to a younger co-worker, but is all business in the White House Situation Room when news of the mysterious missile arrives. Not long after the bomb appears on their tracking screens, a voice over the conference call estimates 19 minutes until impact.
This 19-minute window plays out in each section, focusing on a different group with a different character taking the lead. So just as A House of Dynamite nears the final countdown in the first act, it leaps back 20 minutes for a chapter called “Hitting a Bullet with a Bullet.” The second act focuses on new-to-the-department Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington (Gabriel Basso), who has the comically embarrassing distinction of being late to work on the biggest day of his life.
That means he’s taking this world-defining Zoom call from his cellphone while racing to the office. While every other window is black in privacy mode or showing some grave general or another, Baerington’s is at an unflattering low angle, shaking as he hustles to his station. In chapter one, that’s actually pretty funny. But in chapter two, his frantic running is stressful because we already understand what is at stake. From there, he is our guide into the sweaty calls to foreign diplomats, trying to suss out who launched this missile so that the president might know how to best proceed. Then once again, as we near the end of the countdown, the clock resets.
The third chapter, titled “A House Full of Dynamite” (instead of A House of Dynamite) shifts to the president (Elba). For the first two-thirds of the film, he was only heard over the conference call. Now, what he’s been up to is finally revealed. But this chapter is where the film begins to fall apart.
A House of Dynamite is suffocatingly tense, until it’s just not.
Credit: Eros Hoagland / Netflix
For the first chapter, disembodied voices shout expository lines about the bomb’s trajectory, timing, and likely kill count. As the movie progresses and the timeline resets, these voices become on-camera characters whose stories give greater context to their answers. It’s an effective approach by Oppenheim, as we — like the characters — experience the first act bewildered by the news and the sheer flood of it. With the second and then the third act, we’re not only teased with the catastrophic impact three times, but we’re also given space to step back and better understand the possibilities of what comes next. It’s a lecture, but exciting — even if all the answers boil down to “nothing good!”
However, with a 112-minute runtime, A House of Dynamite tries our patience. The third act splits focus, revealing what’s been going on with the president and the secretary of defense (Jared Harris). What was character-building in the first two acts feels like filler as we, the audience, grow more and more eager to see how this is going to turn out. The third act picks back up as these men make a move. Though not sharing the screen, Elba and Harris deliver performances that swiftly show the strain of these decisions, coupled with the tenderness that makes them impossible.
To the credit of a sensational cast, the vexing pace of A House of Dynamite‘s final act is nearly made bearable because of their performances. The film zips from military installations around the world, grappling with this disaster. Yet Bigelow’s clarity of vision keeps clear who is who and what is what. But at a certain point, A House of Dynamite becomes intentionally aggravating.
You’ll hate the ending of A House of Dynamite.
Credit: Eros Hoagland / Netflix
I predict audiences will hate this ending, as I hated this ending. But I’ll say this: It makes sense.
With A House of Dynamite, Oppenheim and Bigelow set out to explain in a big, flashy Hollywood fashion exactly what a catastrophe a nuclear war would be. They basically give us plenty of sugar through star power and suspense to help the medicine go down.
Perhaps every generation since the atom bomb’s creation has needed such a reminder in compelling art. Watching this movie, I thought a lot about the novel Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank, which I read in high school and still think of, probably too often. A House of Dynamite shows us a noble, handsome collection of soldiers and public servants coming together to protect the nation, its people, and their own families. And all the safeguards that are set up to make sure the worst won’t happen are not enough to guarantee it won’t happen.
A House of Dynamite gets finger-waggy in its anti-nuclear arms messaging. But that’s not the frustrating bit. Bigelow and Oppenheim set up a feast of big questions. It’s not that they’ve bitten off more than they can chew, but that they’ve decided it’s not for them to chew. With this frustrating finale, they leave us without answers, forced to find our own.
While A House of Dynamite will have a brief theatrical run, as a Netflix original it will chiefly be watched at home. How much time for meditation on the movie’s message will at-home audiences have before the streaming service switches over to an algorithm-approved bit of entertainment to distract us?
A House of Dynamite was reviewed out of the New York Film Festival. The movie will open in limited release on Oct. 10, before debuting on Netflix on Oct. 24.