(Kathryn Bigelow, 2025, USA, 112 minutes)
Like any major film festival these days, this year's NYFF included a few Netflix titles, including Richard Linklater's Nouvelle Vague and Noah Baumbach's Jay Kelly (Sony Pictures Classics is handling Blue Moon, Linklater's other NYFF selection).
It's always a mixed blessing. Subscribers, like me, can save money and wait until a film hits streaming unless they would prefer to see it before the official debut and/or with the director and other contributors in attendance.
Netflix also makes films available for critics, but the Seattle screening of A House of Dynamite was scheduled for the same day I was planning to see it in New York, so I bought a ticket, because I didn't want to wait for the October opening, and figured I might never get the chance to see the Oscar-winning director in person again. (Press screenings for NYFF took place primarily between Sept 17 and 25, so that wasn't going to work for me.)
Granted, I would've needed to attend the NYFF premiere to see Rebecca Ferguson, Idris Elba, and Anthony Ramos in person, but that was beyond my budget and schedule.
Instead I attended a screening that included Bigelow, writer Noah Oppenheim, actors Jared Harris and Tracy Letts (very funny), and sound designer Paul N. J. Ottosson, who worked on Bigelow's last three films.
The thriller revolves around a nuclear missile hurtling its way towards the Midwest, and the race against the clock by government and other officials, including the President, to minimize the damage. In some ways, it feels like a continuation of themes Bigelow explored in The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, but Oppenheim's screenplay plays more like Steven Soderbergh's Contagion as Bigelow shifts from person to person and scenario to scenario.
It gets off to a promising start by first introducing the threat, identified by Anthony Ramos's no-nonsense Army Major stationed in Alaska, followed by Rebecca Ferguson's senior intelligence officer in DC, who has a happy home life with husband and child. I figured Bigelow would return to Olivia Walker from time to time, and she does, but not nearly enough, since she's the most clearly-defined character, though not to the same extent as Jessica Chastain's CIA analyst in Zero Dark Thirty. Every other character has some interest or quirk–golf game, jump shot, model train, and the like–that sets them apart, but as the action ramped up, my investment started to wane.
I didn't want to see any of these competent, hard-working people die, let alone their friends and family members, and that isn't something Bigelow shows--though she does suggest it--but the lack of emotional stakes proves a liability.
The grim lesson with which I left is that it's better to avoid angering countries with nuclear capabilities, like Russia and North Korea, than trying to stop a nuclear war once it's begun. The functional, technically-adept White House she depicts also looks nothing like the car filled with clowns currently running the country, which isn't the film's point, but the studious avoidance of politics--the culprit remains a mystery--feels like a cop out.
That said, there's something about seeing a decent, kindly man as President that hurt my heart, because I'm not so sure we'll ever see that again.
James Earl Jones, Morgan Freeman, Dennis Haysbert, Jamie Foxx, and other Black actors have played the President, so Idris Elba–though UK-born–doesn't represent a first, but he does represent an ideal; a guy who treats teenage basketball players, his Special Agent in Charge (Reacher's Brian Tee making the most of a small part), and his staffers with equal respect.
Bigelow has filled out the cast with a wide-ranging group of talents, and they give it their all, but I miss the greater care she once took with character, even in stylized genre exercises like The Loveless, Near Dark, and Strange Days, which, sci-fi trappings aside, is nearly a two-hander with Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett.
I realize her interests and priorities have changed, but A House of Dynamite, though hardly a waste of time, has me hoping she can find her way back to the more affecting--yet still action-packed--films with which she began.
House of Dynamite opens in Seattle at SIFF Uptown on Fri, Oct 10, and comes to Netflix on Oct 24. Images from the IMDb (Joe Klaunberg and Gabriel Basso and Anthony Ramos) and me (Jared Harris, Noah Oppenheim, Kathryn Bigelow, and NYFF programmer Rachel Rosen), and Cinephilia and Beyond (Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett in 1995's Strange Days).
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