Kathryn Bigelow’s “A House of Dynamite” begins with a blow and a rush, and for a while it looks like it will be one of the most simple and streamlined by the Oscar-winning director’s films. In one hour and 52 minutes long, it is the first Bigelow movie since the 2000s “The Weight of Water” that comes in for two hours, and from the opening frames it moves with a completely consumable feeling of urgent.
For the most part, this Netflix movie is all excitement, all the time. And it makes it clear, as if we needed a different reminder, just what an accomplished and dynamic filmmaker Bigelow is. With the help of a substantial team that includes cinematographer Barry Accroyd, editor Kirk Baxter, composer Volker Bertelmann and Sound designer Paul NJ Ottosson, “A House of Dynamite”, “ATTESS be a white-knuckle thriller where almost everyone on the screen” action “activates.
The setting is brutally simple: an American military base in Alaska takes up a launch somewhere off the coast of Asia. It seems to be a missile of some kind, but we do not know who launched it, or if it is a test or a threat. The American strategic command whose, like the White House’s situation room. And when more Intel comes in and it seems that a kind of battle tip is on its way to Chicago and will hit in 19 minutes, every branch of the military and the government is in a main rush to find out what is happening, who is responsible and what to do about it.
Almost the entire “A House of Dynamite” takes place in the 19 minutes … but it is not so easy, and it should hardly come as a surprise to learn that the main scenes’ main speed is not the only trick that Bigelow has up is the sleeve. In a way, she is in familiar territory here; As she did in “The Hurt Locker” and “Zero Dark Thirty”, she takes a journalistic approach (works with screenwriters and former NBC president Noah Oppenheim) which allows her to quickly delineate the internal work in the national security apparatus with a muscularity which is completely her own.
But the film has its turns, turns and restorations, while giving the audience more information while keeping it in balance. It can be riveting and sometimes repetitive, but it does what it aims to do: it loses you in the middle of a crisis and it keeps you there.
“A House of Dynamite” is the story of a morning and an event, told in an engrossing way that does not stop to deliver context or tell more about these characters than we can figure out in the shortest call. The film is on the clock from its opening moments – but when the clock is about to end, it backs up and shows us the same 19 minutes from a different perspective.
So the first time we run through the countdown, we look at the soldiers at the 49th Missile Defense Battery in Fort Greely, Alaska, and Watch Floor Senior Duty Officer at the White House (Rebecca Ferguson) and the Fema Director of National Continuity (Moses Ingram) and Situation Room Senior Senior Senior Director (Jason Director (Jason (Jason Director (Jason (Jason Senior Director (Jason Senior Director (Jason Clark. A flash with more than all the ACRY and all the ACRY Terms to stay in a straight on one more than is holding the property, which is keeping up with one ACRY and all ACRY Terms (MDOD Can Minal Can Miniture Can have all can be sure we are Refers to the exoatmospheric death vehicle), although they are all quickly explained on the screen.
The second time we start in an unclear place in the Indo-Pacific command, and also track a national intelligence official who has taken his son to a civil war reinstatement. We hear the US president on the phone but we do not see him in this version – but when the clock is restored again and the movie goes through the 19 minutes for the third time Idris Elbas Potus is the central figure. Sometimes comes a conversation that we have already seen to play again, but from another vantage point; Sometimes a whole new point of view will sink in, including the vibrant variety of alternatives for nuclear revenge in “nuclear power football” that never leaves the president’s side.
There is a lot to take in and a lot to hold straight, but “A House of Dynamite” delivers it with blunt efficiency. When an assistant at one point says: “We have to slow down, Mr. President,” Summa’s potus is nice: “Time is a luxury we don’t have. We are losing Chicago, and I don’t know why.”
When it is over, Jared Harris has delivered a particularly varying performance as the Defense Secretary, whose daughter is in Chicago, and one of Bertelmann’s best points has gone from portless chords to insistent pulses to Staccato strings. Ackroyd’s camera boilers from faces to screens and back, are reminiscent of part of the urgency in last year’s “September 5”, another film that mostly takes place in containing spaces.
There are gallows humor here, but mostly the movie follows gloomy people who try not to panic. And it gives a sober assessment of a world where some leaders continue to at least talk about using nuclear weapons, and our best defense lines have a success rate that is marginally better than a coin tasting.
At one point in the movie, the president is snapped, “This is madness!”
“No Sir,” says Stratcom commander played by Tracy Lets. “That’s the reality.”
And it’s bigelow.
