‘There’s no plan B…’
When I was growing up in the ’90s, the threat of nuclear war felt like something that belonged in the distant past. The Cold War was over. Nuclear disarmament was the prevailing message of the day. Recent tensions, however, have brought the nuclear issue right back into the public consciousness, as evidenced by the success of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, and of Annie Jacobsen’s celebrated non-fiction book, Nuclear War: A Scenario. Adding to the noise is A House of Dynamite, Kathryn Bigelow’s first feature since Detroit in 2017 and her first film for streaming giant Netflix…
Split into three distinct sections with a stinger at the end, A House of Dynamite holds our hand through the unthinkable scenario of a nuclear attack on America. The first segment, subtitled, Inclination is Flattering, focuses on Rebecca Ferguson’s no-nonsense White House Situation Room oversight officer, Capt. Olivia Walker; Hitting a Bullet with a Bullet, the second segment, presents us with the incredibly stressful trials and tribulations of Deputy National Security Advisor, Jake Baerington (Gabriel Basso), as he attempts to find a solution to an unsolvable problem; while A House Filled with Dynamite, the final section, follows Idris Elba as PUSA himself and his dawning realisation that the world is falling down around him. The conceit (and the only real misstep here) is that we see the same events played out three times but from different perspectives.
There is a temptation to assume that if ever there was to be a nuclear attack, that those in power would know what to do and act accordingly. I’d never really considered that these people, these crucial people, are just human beings with families, and biases, and the ability to make terminally bad decisions. It’s a frightening prospect and one that Bigelow fully exploits.
I’ll begin with the positives. Writer Noah Oppenheim draws on all of his experience as senior producer on NBC’s The Today Show to deliver a tight and utterly captivating screenplay. I don’t know how accurate the portrayal of the response to a nuclear attack is, but I do know, that in the hands of Oppenheim and Bigelow, it’s incredibly compelling. Performances across the board are strong, with Ferguson particularly impressive as a woman juggling her professional pride with her desperation to save her family, and Volker Bertelmann’s insistent score dovetails with the ominous tension of the narrative beautifully. As previously mentioned, however, the structure is a problem. I’m not sure what is gained by witnessing the same events three times, or rather, I understand that we gain three very different and human responses, but I’m confused as to why we couldn’t witness these responses in real time rather than one after another. By the time we get to the third section, the steadily rising tension has deflated somewhat as we find ourselves trapped in the most terrifying version of Groundhog Day imaginable.
That being said, I found A House of Dynamite to be a taut and heart-pounding nuclear thriller. It has also unlocked a new fear deep in my soul that we will all be annihilated by a nuclear warhead, and that I won’t have finished reading all of Stephen King‘s bibliography before that happens. It’s a cruel world.
