It's OK to expect more from 'A House of Dynamite'
Netflix
Thanks for the reminder that “Crimson Tide” rules. But three decades later, it’s more than a little surprising that Kathryn Bigelow (“The Hurt Locker,” “Zero Dark Thirty”), so skilled in the urgency of political thrillers, would deliver a to-launch-or-not-to-launch nuclear saga that feels so redundant.
Although, yes, “A House of Dynamite” — which doesn’t deserve to be mentioned alongside “Dr. Strangelove” or “Fail-Safe” — is redundant by design. It spoils nothing to say that the movie is divided into sections, and several times this results in seeing footage we’ve already seen again but with a focus on a different character. (I guess this is what happens when all the action takes place in roughly the 17 minutes between determining there’s a nuclear bomb heading toward the U.S. and the time it’s expected to go off.) If you think this would add a great deal of shading to a horrifying scenario, you might be right in other movies but not this time. Whether we’re with Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) in the situation room or a deputy national security advisor (Gabriel Basso) attempting to de-escalate a rising panic or the president (Idris Elba) as he struggles to determine what to do, the narrative spins its wheels without deepening or going anywhere that wasn’t handled better in the underrated “Don’t Look Up.”
Certainly there is suspense in a ticking clock that seems likely to lead to the deaths of millions of people, if not more. But Noah Oppenheim’s (“The Maze Runner,” “Jackie”) script fails to uncover anything new about the human error, technological limitations, and other challenges that can occur in awful, time-sensitive circumstances, not to mention a commitment to ambiguity that deprives the big choices of their consequences. No premise is foolproof enough to withstand foolish structural decisions and frustrating narrative hedging.
Plus, only a corny, generic version of this concept would include characters who are about to propose or expecting a baby, yet somehow that’s what we have here too, as if “I don’t want to die in a nuclear explosion” isn’t enough to raise the stakes.
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