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\n The director\u2019s latest, her first film in seven years, is an absurdly riveting thriller with the kind of ticking-clock suspense Bigelow does so well.
\n Photo: Eros Hoagland\/Netflix\n <\/p>\n
The very basic premise of Kathryn Bigelow\u2019s A House of Dynamite is gripping on its own: A single missile is launched at the United States, nobody knows where it\u2019s from, and the national security apparatus springs into action. Thankfully, the movie delivers on that promise. The director\u2019s latest, her first film in seven years, is an absurdly riveting thriller with the kind of ticking-clock, military-grade suspense she does so well. Bigelow intercuts multiple arenas and juggles a small army of characters without ever losing sight of the central, upsettingly simple set of dilemmas: Can they stop the missile in time? Who fired it? How should the U.S. respond? The film is already receiving hosannas at Venice and will surely grab its share of eyeballs when it eventually premieres on Netflix.<\/p>\n
A House of Dynamite actually has a predictable set of moves, at least once the main plot kicks in, but this makes Bigelow\u2019s ability to maintain suspense that much more impressive. Her technique gives Noah Oppenheim\u2019s jargon-heavy script conviction and urgency. I probably couldn\u2019t tell you much about what terms like launch azimuth and exoatmospheric kill vehicle and terminal phase and dual phenomenology really mean (not to mention the several dozen acronyms being tossed about), and I sure as hell couldn\u2019t say if they\u2019re being used properly here. But the film has an aura of technical accuracy, which is what matters. The actors sing their lines with a rat-a-tat confidence that\u2019s so convincing we start to worry they\u2019re giving away government secrets.<\/p>\n
Watching Bigelow depict these offices, situation rooms, and control centers all abuzz with increasingly hurrying (and increasingly horrified) officials, we suspect she is drawn to these type-A professionals because she relates to them. Ever since Zero Dark Thirty, her 2012 film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, was attacked for buying too fully into the CIA\u2019s version of events, the director has been accused of unquestioningly laundering the images of the U.S. military and the intelligence industry. There will be those who take one look at a picture like A House of Dynamite and consider it a form of propaganda for the national security apparatus. This is frankly ridiculous \u2014 the film is all about how the system, even when functioning perfectly, will surely fail us.<\/p>\n
Bigelow can make a movie like this because she understands the appeal and awe of power. She depicts these powerful spaces with elegant establishing shots and smooth camera moves suggesting control, calm, and certitude. But whenever it steps out into the real world, the film becomes agitated and hurried, our vision obstructed. A House of Dynamite doesn\u2019t have the sweaty humanity of Fail Safe or the dark absurdism of Dr. Strangelove. Rather, it has a fascination with authority and professionalism and their limits: What if everyone follows orders and does their job really well and everything still goes to shit? (Forget what might happen if the people in charge are a bunch of incompetent, ignorant buffoons; surely that would never happen.)<\/p>\n
The film\u2019s action is split into three sections, each focusing on a different set of individuals as they respond to the fact that, in 18 minutes, a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific will most likely hit the city of Chicago and instantly incinerate around 10 million people. The structure elegantly goes up the chain of command: Each level of the government org chart must tackle this problem at a different point in its trajectory. In the first chapter, most of the activity centers on a missile-defense battalion in Alaska, with its command and control center run by Major David Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos), and the White House Situation Room, where watch-floor senior duty officer Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) tries to respond to the rapidly developing crisis; their job is to identify and ultimately bring down the nuke. In the second chapter, we follow what happens at U.S. Strategic Command, where gung-ho general Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts) begins urging the president to prepare to strike at all U.S. adversaries in case this is a coordinated attack; meanwhile, at the emergency operations center deep beneath the White House, deputy national security advisor Jake Baerington (Gabriel Basso) tries to advise calm.<\/p>\n
In the final section, we watch the secretary of Defense (Jared Harris) and the president (Idris Elba), both of whom, we gather, have only recently entered office, try to deal with what\u2019s starting to look like the ultimate calamity. At one point, they remark that they have been briefed about this eventuality only once, whereas they\u2019ve been briefed about filling a potential Supreme Court vacancy countless times. Even as she depicts the professionalism of her characters, Bigelow makes it clear that they are all totally unprepared for this situation. Lines like \u201cWe\u2019ve run this drill a thousand times!\u201d and \u201cWe did everything right, didn\u2019t we?\u201d ring not with optimism but with bitter irony.<\/p>\n
Not unlike Christopher Nolan\u2019s Oppenheimer, A House of Dynamite is fundamentally an institutionalist\u2019s outcry about the horrors of nuclear proliferation. The specter of atomic annihilation, once such a major part of our collective fears, has been dormant for so long, even as the danger hasn\u2019t decreased. We get brief, little human details for many of the characters \u2014 not enough to edge into corniness but just enough to make it clear they are, in fact, people: One is dealing with a breakup, another with a divorce; one with a pregnancy, another with a child sick at home with a 102-degree fever; one needs a new apartment, another plans to propose to his girl. The secretary of Defense is mourning his wife, which gives weight to his initially selfish-sounding reflection that his daughter lives in Chicago. These tiny bits and bobs of humanity gather power as the film marches on. As a result of the overlapping timelines, certain small moments play out multiple times, each moment with fresh context.<\/p>\n
The fractured narrative replicates the characters\u2019 fractured perspectives. From within their highly secure rooms, where they can\u2019t even bring their own cell phones, these people struggle to reach the outside world. Communication is fragile and inconsistent, reflecting both physical and existential claustrophobia: Nobody really knows or sees what\u2019s going on. Early in the timeline, we see the president attending a WNBA kids\u2019 event with Angel Reese, but this moment out among the public also feels highly choreographed and manufactured. Along with everyone else in this film, he is closed off to the rest of the world \u2014 even as he holds in his hands the power to obliterate all of it.<\/p>\n
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