What if a missile got through? What if a random nuclear missile launched from an enemy country broke through United States defenses and bore down upon a large metro area? That’s the question asked by A House of Dynamite – essentially: What would that look like and how would we feel about it?
It’s not a fun question and it makes for one of the tensest films of the year, the tension only muted by the resetting of the clock as the movie is narrated from three different vantage points.
Part I: Inclination is Happening or as I read it: “Holy Shit! Is this really happening?!” White House oversight officer Rebecca Ferguson summons a hundred of her favorite unformed friends to talk about the missile headed for Chicago before each one, in turn, essentially says, “not my call.”
Part II: Hitting a Bullet with a Bullet or “Aw, rats, the exposition chapter.” Here, General Tracy Letts goes from “Did you see the game last night?” to “Oh, this is really serious.” Meanwhile, Gabriel Basso has a talk with the Russians, “Did you do this? No. Well, mind if we retaliate in your airspace?”
Part III: A House Filled with Dynamite or “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. This Isn’t What I Signed Up For.” In the final segment. President Idris Elba goes personally from Defcon 5 to Defcon 1 while discussing how the country will respond. Ain’t no good options here. They come down to “Surrender or Suicide.” The fact is if a stupid enough man with a grudge and power he has neither earned, nor deserves, gets ahold of a nuclear weapon, yeah, the world as we know it could end.
A House of Dynamite is a film that lives entirely in the realm of tension. The problem is that tension this high can’t sustain itself over two hours, so it has to reset and we feel it all over again. This has the opposite effect as intended. Instead of the film become more intense as the situation scales up from another perspective, we kind of reach a “been there, done that” resignation. The crescendo reached its peak in segment one; it won’t get there again. What we really want is “Ok, what’s going to happen?” and “Why do we need to care about the people on our screen other than their jobs are important?” There is precious little about the latter to recommend itself.
The scariest part of House of Dynamite is, from my perspective, what it didn’t show: reality. Through most of this film, I kept thinking about the current
counterparts of these fictional people. I thought about how horrifying it would be to have the fate of the world decided by unqualified tools like Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth.
That scares me.
It’s one thing when these prime examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect are just playing at jobs they don’t understand, fully unaware of protocol, duties, or responsibilities; it is quite another when you put the power to destroy the world into their hands. Heck, if Fox News told Trump that Los Angeles was responsible for the attack, he’d bomb there first. Thinking about the sycophantic jackoffs in positions of power stemming from -easily- the most emotionally unstable, narcissistic, and myopic president in US history, the scary thing is how these guys would react to a genuine crisis. It doesn’t help that Trump and the entire GOP have taken to heart the lesson of never taking blame or responsibility no matter how obvious it is that you created the mess.
As for how that all relates to the film? It doesn’t, really. And for however tense A House of Dynamite got, I’m not sure you want people thinking about something else while your film is playing, and that’s where I was 80% of the time.
A nuke is headed for the states
Ain’t no time for debates
The missile got through
Not much left to do
But shrug as our species deflates
Rated R, 112 Minutes
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Writer: Noah Oppenheim
Genre: The ultimate “What if” film
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: People who enjoy endless tension
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: People who want answers
