For an age in which the threat of nuclear annihilation is so unmistakably present, it strikes one as quite strange how so few contemporary filmmakers dare to grapple with one of the key issues of our times — almost as if narratives on mutually assured destruction have become radioactive material in themselves. Sure, we have Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (2023) that serves as the alpha to our atomic-aged omega, but whatever happened to nail-biters such as WarGames (John Badham, 1983) and Fail Safe (Sidney Lumet, 1964), the probing satire of Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964), or those silly spectacles that are actually Certified Bangers™ like The Hunt for Red October (John McTiernan, 1990) and Crimson Tide (Tony Scott, 1995)? We’re talking about genuine movie-movies, boasting tense men in suits wiping sweat from their foreheads as they stare at computer screens that count down toward potential global obliteration.
Kathryn Bigelow has made such a film before with K-19: The Widowmaker (2002), starring Harrison Ford as a Russian Commanding Officer submerged in a nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine. Although far from her best, it still flexed what was back then known as her main calling card: elevated genre fare, embellished by baroque cinematography and hyper-machismo performances by electrifying movie stars. With A House of Dynamite, she has now made the far superior version of an atomic warfare picture, one that revives all the anxieties of the Cold War and propels it into the 21st century. Actually, this is easily one of Bigelow’s very best films, and the most brilliant crystallisation of what we could call her late era — one that is defined by an unwavering fascination with the American Military Industrial Complex.
Bigelow describes A House of Dynamite as the final entry in an “unofficial triptych,” capping her Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker (2008) and controversial follow-up Zero Dark Thirty (2012). Taken together, these films probe the American imperial mindset in a post-9/11 reality, stirring the scarred psyche of a country that has entangled itself in a seemingly never-ending ambient war with the rest of the world. The first two entries in this triptych mostly projected their gaze outwards through their exploration of the fraught power dynamics of American boots on Middle Eastern soil, whereas A House of Dynamite strongly benefits from taking the opposite approach. In a sly reversal, it’s the American airspace that’s being penetrated here by an unattributed missile carrying a nuclear payload. Once that calamitous blip appears on the radars of the U.S. Strategic Command and is heading toward Chicago, it triggers a pressure-cooker scenario in which, over the course of a mere 18 minutes, the US is dragged into nuclear warfare and possible total annihilation.
So much happens within those precious minutes that to recount most of the plot within the confines of this review would be superfluous — especially since Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim chop up the narrative in a three-part structure, allowing them to repeatedly loop back in time to explore the inner mechanics of America’s nuclear deterrence from a myriad of perspectives. Cross-cutting between The Oval Office’s Situation Room, the Pentagon, Strategic Command offices, a missile base in Alaska, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Bigelow unravels the clockwork mechanisms with unprecedented insight and access, delivering a striking level of verisimilitude for what is essentially an old-school political thriller.
All of that is captured in what is the director’s most Michael Mann-esque film to date. With taut cinematography that frantically captures the interplay between agents of the state and their computer screens, A House of Dynamite revels in extracting suspense out of the digital flux. It’s like Bigelow found the perfect marriage between the stressful kineticism of hit aughts series 24 and the cerebral video work of Harun Farocki. Meanwhile, she constantly emphasises the human factor at play, as A House of Dynamite is highly attuned to the emotional duress that all the cogs in the machine experience while desperately trying to maintain their professional composure. It’s essentially a film about the painful process of decision-making in extremis. And as America moves closer and closer to the brink of nuclear collapse, the plot funnels all this anxiety upwards and throws it on the lap of the President (Idris Elba), who, within mere minutes, is forced to decide on America’s level of nuclear retaliation. What A House of Dynamite ultimately shows is that, to some degree, this decision ceases to be political. It’s essentially the ultimate philosophical dilemma — the most nightmarish trolley problem one can imagine.
Due to her sympathetic depictions of Americans engaged in active warfare — and her close collaborations with the army, CIA, and other state agencies to deliver these realistic pictures — Bigelow has often been criticised for giving America’s Military Industrial Complex a pass. In the case of Zero Dark Thirty, those critiques especially rang true, as this film about the operation that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden could reasonably be argued to condone violent interrogation techniques used to gain intel on America’s adversaries. It’s always seemed that it’s exactly this “problematic” proximity to the U.S. war apparatus that made Bigelow one of the most important American filmmakers of our time, as her Riefenstahl-esque relationship to the centers of power allowed for extremely clear-headed insights into the weltanschauung of a dying empire. In these morally shifty films, America is always portrayed as the victim of its own violent imperialism, a political insecurity that constantly refuels America’s raison d’être in its quest for global domination.
In every sense of the word, A House of Dynamite is the natural endpoint of Bigelow’s cinematic project, as it reveals the glaring ideological void that’s at the heart of maintaining the failing American project. All the professionals on screen are trained to sustain a level of stability in a geopolitically volatile landscape, but desperately lack a guiding narrative when push comes to shove. Idris Elba’s POTUS is somewhat Obama-coded in his pop-savvy appearance, but his supposed Democratic affiliation provides no clear path forward in the face of his overwhelming dilemma. One of the best shots of the film actually features Pete Souza’s canonical Situation Room photograph in the background, depicting Obama and Hillary Clinton as they witness a live feed of the assassination of Osama bin Laden. Cause and effect are conflated here, showing America’s eagerness to invade, and its confusion when the favor gets returned.
It’s ironic that we never learn which advisory has lobbed the bomb, suggesting that America has made so many enemies that they have collectively mutated into an amorphous mess. The sharpest bit of geopolitical analysis that A House of Dynamite offers on this entanglement is that Russia might be the most probable source, as Putin’s regime has already gotten away with the annexation of Crimea and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. One advisor suggests this is yet another test of the Kremlin — an atomic humiliation of America in the theatre of war, showing how easy it is to undermine U.S. authority wholesale. It’s simply staggering how level-headed and probable this interpretation is. And it only reinforces that Bigelow has made a tremendously skillful time capsule of our present, a film that for better or worse perfectly embodies what America’s anxious and insecure relation with the rest of the world looks like right now.
DIRECTOR: Kathryn Bigelow; CAST: Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Gabriel Basso, Anthony Ramos, Greta Lee; DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix; IN THEATERS: October 10; STREAMING: October 24; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 52 min.
Published as part of Venice Film Festival 2025 — Dispatch 2.
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