What if you have only an 18-minute window to make a decision that will determine the fate of a nation? The scenario: A nuclear missile is launched from an unknown origin and it’s heading to one of the major cities in the U.S., which turns out to be Chicago. This leaves the relevant U.S. authorities to respond swiftly before it’s too late. That’s the setup in A House of Dynamite concocted by screenwriter Noah Oppenheim with Kathryn Bigelow in charge of the direction, marking her long-awaited return to helming a feature film since Detroit in 2017. And interestingly, the race-against-time premise is told in a Rashomon-like narrative approach, spreading across three perspectives: Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson), a senior officer in the White House Situation Room, General Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts) from United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM), and the President of the United States, played by Idris Elba.
On paper, it looks like Bigelow got herself a winner here. Besides, she is no stranger to combining gripping, high-stakes storytelling with a political edge seen in her last three movies, including The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty and Detroit. A premise like A House of Dynamite is no doubt right in her wheelhouse. For the first act, the movie gets off to a promising start: In a seemingly ordinary day, Walker’s otherwise routine day at work in the White House Situation Room turns into a pressure-cooker situation after she and her team is alerted about an unidentified missile launch in the air, which was first discovered by Major Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos) and his crew at Fort Greely in Alaska. They initially figure it might be a test, only to realize the missile turns out to be an actual threat.
Kudos to Bigelow for maximizing the tension set within the confines of the White House Situation Room as we see Walker and everyone involved scrambling to identify the origin of the threat, making Zoom calls with high-ranking officials, and monitoring the countdown clock displayed on a large screen. Every minute counts, and the people in the room look either panicked or worried, despite trying their best to maintain professionalism in the face of a crisis. Ferguson’s take-charge performance matches well with the movie’s ticking-clock, dread-inducing setup as we anticipate whether the missile will impact its targeted city at the end of the 18-minute window.
And just as Bigelow raises the stakes higher, everything stops. No, it’s not because the missile malfunctioned, but rather the movie itself going back to square one in the second act. It’s equivalent to watching a suspenseful movie with a deliberate buildup, only to be disappointed by an abrupt, yet anticlimactic payoff. The “payoff” remains in limbo since we never know if the missile will end up detonating Chicago or if any of the relevant authorities manage to find their best possible solution to counter the sudden attack.
I always have a soft spot for movies that use Rashomon-style storytelling from The Usual Suspects to Snake Eyes, Elephant and Vantage Point. I wish I could say the same for A House of Dynamite, but once the second act takes place, shifting its focus to Tracy Letts’s General Anthony Brady, the underlying tension and stakes that have been building up promisingly in the earlier stretch begin to lose steam. It’s a rinse-and-repeat structure with more or less the same storytelling beat – characters react, debate and make tough calls while the clock is counting down at 18 minutes to impact.
Instead of showing a story that brings a fresh, and more importantly, intriguing perspective from the same scenario, the movie grows increasingly passive since the result keeps deflecting into a waiting game rather than thrusting the narrative forward. This makes the same story but different character’s POV in the second act feels like a frustrating experience to sit through, despite Tracy Letts doing his best playing a no-nonsense STRATCOM general. By the time A House of Dynamite shifted its focus again, this time telling the story from the perspective of Idris Elba’s role as the U.S. President, who learns that the missile is currently heading to Chicago and he only has minutes to make a choice, I begin to lose interest.
Perhaps Oppenheim’s screenplay wants us to know that even the U.S., with all its expertise and technology, renders the otherwise most powerful country defenseless in the event of a surprise nuclear attack. Theoretically, it’s a scary what-if scenario, but the execution tells a different story. Again, the repetitive nature of making us watch the same events unfold for another two times after the thrilling first act laid out its setting doesn’t help much to elevate the movie’s dramatic weight.
