A One Mann’s Movies review of “A House of Dynamite” (2025, 4*, 15).
The wonderful American satirist Tom Lehrer, who only died in July of this year, once memorably sang “We will all char together when we char/ And let there be no moaning of the bar/ Just sing out a Te Deum/ When you see that ICBM/And the party will be ‘come as you are’.” This famous little ditty came to mind when I was watching “A House of Dynamite”, the latest film from Oscar-winner Kathryn Bigalow. I thought it was a cracking piece of cinema…. but it is perhaps one of the most divisive films of the year.
Note that I will withhold any spoilers until a “Spoiler Section” of this review below the trailer. But I will be discussing the structure of the film. As I think this is a film best sampled completely cold, this is a case where I would suggest you NOT read any further and watch the film before reading this review.
One Mann’s Movies Rating:
Plot:
It’s just an ordinary sort of day for the team manning Fort Greely, a missile defence station in Alaska, and for Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) who arrives at work in the WHSR (the White House Situation Room). “Have a Nice Day” everyone says to each other. Even the bus into work says it. But when a single ‘launch event’ is detected in the Pacific, the day turns into anything but ordinary.
Certification:
UK: 15; US: R. (From the BBFC web site: “Strong language, threat”.)
Talent:
Starring: Rebecca Ferguson, Idris Elba, Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts, Anthony Ramos, Moses Ingram, Jonah Hauer-King, Greta Lee, Jason Clarke, Kaitlyn Dever.
Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow.
Written by: Noah Oppenheim.
Running Time: 1h 52m.
Summary:
Positives:
- Genuinely gripping scenes that you feel mimic the chaotic reality of the events.
- Great performances, especially from Rebecca Ferguson, Tracey Letts, Jared Harris and Idris Elba.
- A clever refreshing of the events as we move up the line.
- A great score.
Negatives:
- The ending will (and has) infuriated many people.
- The repetitive nature of the film will also be tiresome to some.
Full Review of “A House of Dynamite”:
A brilliantly realised vision of chaos.
The film imagines a political event so extreme that – as one of the characters comments in the film – it is something that has never been tested for in a dry-run. And what’s so impressive about this film is how well it builds on the tension associated with that.
The rule-book goes out the window when push goes to shove: mobile phones, locked in their ‘bookcase’ outside the situation room, get accessed… of course the staff want to speak to/warn their loved ones; orders to FEMA to evacuate a city are questioned – “SURELY this must be just another drill” – wasting precious time; some key people are on the road, so communications are challenging; in another case, a key leader is under surgery, so their stressed deputy – Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington (Gabriel Basso) – has to step into very deep water. It’s all very plausible.
Three times the build-up.
The writer, Noah Oppenheim (I can’t be the only one who finds his surname somewhat ironic in this context?), makes a bold move to establish the film around three versions of the same event – namely, the 18 minute sequence from the ‘launch event’ to the ‘resolution’ of that. We first see the view from Fort Greely and the WHSR, with subsequent iterations moving progressively up the chain of command until we finally get to POTUS, who we have, to date, only heard on the audio link.
Of course, as you progress through each ‘chapter’, the tension builds to a crescendo and then drops off a cliff again as we return to “DEFCON 4”. So this is one of the things about the film that many will view as a flaw. I was willing to live with this device: some will not.
Listening to an interview with Kathryn Bigalow on the Kermode and Mayo “Take” podcast, this 18 minute sequence was performed in real time across all the different participants in the film, using the different sets and the different camera crews. I’m not sure if this trick extended to POTUS travelling in his car and Marine One helicopter…. but either way, it is an audacious piece of directing.
Great sets.
All of this is amplified by the creation of some terrific sets which – I’ve heard comment from the people who actually do those jobs – are scarily accurate. There are also nice touches in that in the WHSR there is a faulty monitor which some average maintenance ‘Joe’ from engineering is trying to fix. All this while hell is breaking loose all around him and he is wondering if this job will be his last!
A Great Ensemble cast.
This is a film where a lot of familiar faces pop up, sometimes (e.g. as for Kaitlyn Dever) only for a crucial cameo. The whole ensemble cast is terrific, but call outs for me are the ever-excellent Rebecca Ferguson as the mother with stress on her plate; Tracy Letts as the cool-headed General Brady; Jared Harris as the Secretary of Defence Reid Baker, at the end of his tether (see “Spoiler Section”) and Idris Elba as a particular VIP!
Terrific music.
The music is by Volker Bertelmann, the Oscar-winner of course for “All Quiet on the Western Front“. It wouldn’t surprise me if he got another Oscar nomination for this score too. It uses a really cleverly persistent and melancholic four note motif that grinds away at your nerves without you ever realising it. I’m sure this is a film that if you could watch it again without the music it would seem a lot less tense.
A polarising finale.
The ending is what most of the internet is alive with…. but I will not spoil it here but save that discussion for a “Spoiler Section” below the trailer.
Monkey?
There is a “monkey” of sorts in the end titles, but it is so perversely subtle that I thought my film friends were having me on! Again, I will save this reference for the “Spoiler Section” below the trailer.
Summary Thoughts:
For reasons explained in the Spoiler Section below, the world is divided into those that go with the structure of the film and that ending and those that don’t. So your honest reaction to this film might be 1* or it might be 5* and you would still be right! I thought, having seen it twice now, once in the cinema and once on streaming, that it was really cool and may make my – very packed – Top 20 films of the year list.
“A House of Dynamite” is available to stream on Netflix.
Where to watch?
Trailer:
The trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wpw2QHJNco.
Spoiler Section:
Don’t read past this point if you’ve not seen the movie.
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NO, SERIOUSLY!
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The Sum of All Fears
The ending of each “chapter” involves the countdown to the ICBM striking Chicago and we leave the action a split second before reaching zero.
We also have, in the third chapter, the cliff-hanger of the decision that the President (Idris Elba) makes as to whether or not to unleash one of the retaliatory measures contained within his Doomsday playbook. (His plaintive cry resonates: that ‘we only have all these options in the manual so that THEY know we have all these options… not that we are supposed to use them’.)
Once again, we have a movie instantiation of POTUS that stands head-and-shoulders above the real thing in terms of competence and intelligence… and even he doesn’t know what to do. (One of the secret service members comments, as an aside to another aide, that all of his predecessors have been “chronically vain narcissists”, LOL! Can you even imagine what Trump would do under those circumstances?!! It doesn’t bear thinking about.
But then, in this third chapter, as the countdown approaches zero again…. the film just ends. There is no explosion. There is no report of a dud landing. It just ends. It is left up to your imagination as to what happens in Chicago and what actions the President takes.
I found this a bold bit of movie-making. Many others have taken to social media to vent their spleen. Below is just a subset that I selected of the comments made on Threads about the ending!
The “Monkey”
Some film-reviewing colleagues pointed me at something that purported to give some closure to the story during the end titles: a “monkey” of an audio-only variety.
I replayed the end-titles. Nothing.
I went back to social media and they said “play it with the subtitles”. So I did. Still nothing.
I went back to social media and they said “play it with the Closed Caption (CC) subtitles”. So I did. And, yes indeed, there are three places in the first half of the titles where the subtitles say “[Explosion]”: one after “Music by Volker Bertelmann”; one during the title for Jonah Hauer-King; and one after the title for Kaitlyn Dever. But the audio effect is so quiet and subtle that I just thought it was part of Volker Bertelmann’s music effects.
Given that the subtitles are probably added by some dude sitting listening to the film after the production, you wonder if these subtitles were indeed intended by Bigalow. Or perhaps the guy or gal doing the subtitling was just using some artistic license! It’s certainly not the definitive closure that the last Threads user, above, was asking for!
An irrational decision?
The only element of the plot that didn’t quite stack up for me was the third reel suicide of the Secretary of Defence, Reid Baker (Jared Harris). Sure, we already had the backstory that he was depressed with the death of his wife. And we knew his daughter (Kaitlyn Dever) was in Chicago. But, as other characters were saying during the film, it was no ‘dead cert’ that the missile was loaded with a nuclear warhead. Or that the nuclear warhead would have gone off. So the suicide under those circumstances struck me as ‘over-hasty’.
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