Oscar-winning director Katheryn Bigelow returns from an eight-year hiatus with A House of Dynamite, a tense thriller that is 95% complete.
As a huge Katheryn Bigelow fan, it gives me no pleasure to describe A House of Dynamite as one of the most infuriating movies of the year, a film that is almost excellent–but completely cops out when it matters most. But the ending exposes a bigger issue: A House of Dynamite is a narratively light experience that only has 30 minutes of substance before losing so much steam that Bigelow has to reboot the story. Twice.
The movie nearly succeeds thanks to Bigelow’s talent. A House of Dynamite, about the U.S. government’s reaction to a possible nuclear attack, is gripping at times, emotional at others. I’m a sucker for these kinds of movies, ones that place the audience into real-time, boots-on-the-ground situations that depict people making tough decisions. Bigelow, who made the incredible Zero Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker, crafts a riveting opening act, powered by an emotional performance by Rebecca Ferguson. Bigelow lays the groundwork for a complex thriller.
Unfortunately, given that the story effectively takes place over the 20 minutes it’ll take for a ballistic missile to travel around the world and land in the United States, Bigelow finds herself trapped by a dearth of material.
Thirty minutes in, A House of Dynamite starts over, focusing on different characters making different decisions but going through a similar cycle of emotions. It’s interesting enough, with Bigelow pulling back the curtain a bit more and moving up the chain of command.
But then, thirty minutes later, the movie starts over. Again. And it’s just more of the same, only with Idris Elba.
We’re going to get into spoiler territory here, something I generally don’t like to do, but it’s impossible to avoid: Bigelow, three times over, brings us to Minute Zero. After pulling back the first two times, you expect that she is finally going to deliver and show us whether all the fretting is for cause. But she doesn’t do it. She cops out, in the biggest way possible. It’s stunningly insulting, and, more importantly, immediately kills any goodwill the movie had earned up until this point.
Proponents are going to argue that A House of Dynamite isn’t about the destination but rather the emotional journey along the way, an exploration of how people react when the worst case scenario is at hand. But it just doesn’t work.
A House of Dynamite is only 95% complete, and the only thing that exploded was my head as the end credits began to roll.
Review by Erik Samdahl. Erik is a marketing and technology executive by day, avid movie lover by night. He is a member of the Seattle Film Critics Society.