Tepid ‘House of Dynamite’ is less than explosive
Thermonuclear war is hardly a laughing matter. Well, that is, unless you’re Oscar-winner Kathryn Bigelow. With her seriously wrongheaded “A House of Dynamite,” the acclaimed director unintentionally keeps the guffaws coming at a blistering pace. The stilted gestures, the hyperbolic dialogue, the hammy acting … It’s all giggle fodder.
I know, I should not be chuckling over the end of the world, but Noah Oppenheim’s clunky script makes it impossible to maintain composure for more than a few moments at a time. And who thought it narratively wise to depict the same impenetrable scenario thrice from narrowly divergent perspectives? Not a good choice. Heck, why is Bigelow even involved?
I would prefer to think the director of “The Hurt Locker” and “Zero Dark Thirty” is above tropes associated with cheesy1990s disaster movies than a sobering reminder that the world remains one stupid decision away from complete and utter annihilation.
And where’s the urgency, the excitement, the nail-biting tension that should be inherent in a story about the globe just 19 minutes from incineration? This is Bigelow, damn it! The woman who shattered our nerves watching Jeremy Renner dismantle IEDs in Iraq and Seal Team 6’s quietly taking out bin Laden in the dead of a Pakistani night.
Here, she simply goes through the motions, rendering “A House of Dynamite” little more than a blah TV movie of the week, stock full of glamorous people in menial jobs from a White House Situation Room boss (Rebecca Ferguson) to a himbo NSA dude (Gabriel Basso) carelessly sharing classified information while Facetiming with high-level officials during a mad dash through the crowded streets of Washington, D.C.
And bless her, Bigelow gets all nostalgic by presenting us with a credible facsimile of the Obamas through the wasted efforts of Idris Elba and Renée Elise Goldsberry as POTUS and his safari-tripping first lady. But even they can’t stop Chicago from being wiped off the map. Or, can they? We never really know because three times over, Bigelow yells “cut” one second before Chi-town is about to go kablooey! She leaves it to you to decide, as Tracy Letts’ baseball-obsessed army general notes, “it’s a 50-50 proposition” if these warheads discharge. Really? Like these crises happen often enough to justify those odds?
For the sake of Secretary of Defense Ried Baker, you’d better hope they don’t detonate because the recent widower’s only child (Kaitlyn Dever) happens to live in the Windy City. Like many of these “top” decision-makers, the fate of the American people is occasionally put on hold while they phone their loved ones one last time. Not very comforting if you’re us. But, damn, “did you see what Lindor did last night?” That, BTW, is the scintillating catch phrase assigned to Letts’ Gen. Anthony Bradley, obviously a fan of New York Met Francisco Lindor.
I’m assuming Lindor is also a favorite of Oppenheim, who went to the trouble of repeatedly name-dropping the shortstop in a half-baked screenplay that seeks to ape Aaron Sorkin’s rat-a-tat dialogue from “The West Wing.” He certainly loves his acronyms and jargon, wrongly assuming we are equally familiar with NORAD, STRATCOM, Iron Gate list and “acceptable” casualty counts. In the case of Chicago, 10 million deaths will be sustainable – if no other missiles are fired.
And exactly who is attacking us? Who knows. And I suspect that’s the point the film is attempting to establish, given that nukes have become almost as readily available as cell phones in today’s volatile world. This provides the film’s ultimate dilemma: Who do we retaliate against and when? The prevailing answer seems to be “against every nation.” That prospect DOES send a shiver instead of a snicker. A rare occasion.
Most of what’s here is military and civilian officials spread across these United States suddenly realizing that once a nuke is fired, we’re all basically screwed. Dah! As POTUS is informed, he has two choices: “Surrender or suicide.” While enduring “A House of Dynamite,” I kept getting more and more comfortable with the latter.
Were the wounds Bigelow suffered in the wake of her 2017 dud, “Detroit,” the reason for an eight-year hiatus and severing ties with Mark Boal, the Oscar-winner who also penned “Hurt Locker” and “Zero Dark Thirty”? Boal’s sharp, concise writing is conspicuously missing here, replaced by the pap produced by the same guy who underwhelmed us with his mediocre scripts for “Jackie” and “The Maze Runner.”
Couldn’t Oppenheim at least have written a scene allowing Bigelow to level Chicago in mindless disaster movie fashion? Nope! Instead, we get a free ad for the WNBA featuring Caitlin Clark’s nemisis, Angel Reese. Heck, even she doesn’t ignite. Alas, the only bomb here is “A House of Dynamite.” Kaboom!
Movie review
A House of Dynamite
Rated: R for language
Cast: Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Tracy Letts, Jared Harris, Greta Lee, Gabriel Basso and Jason Clarke
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Writer: Noah Oppenheim
Runtime: 115 minutes
Where: Currently in theaters and streaming on Netflix beginning Oct. 24
Grade: C-
