A House of Dynamite: Kathryn Bigelow’s Cold-Razor Thriller

I was at the Venice Premiere for Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker in September 2008. Knowing nothing going in, I was absolutely blown away—pun intended—by the crude portrayal of war, its lasting psychological impact and I was introduced to a young new hopeful actor who today we all know as Jeremy Renner.

A House of Dynamite was a jarring, eerie and similar experience for me. All I knew going in is that I absolutely love Kathryn Bigelow's movies, her dry, no BS and tense directing style always brings the movie home for me. Her choice of subject matter—PTSD for The Hurt Locker, the hunt for Osama Bin Laden in Zero Dark Thirty, the 1967 riots in Detroit—has recently been stark, uncomfortable topics and I didn't know if this would a thriller, espionage or maybe an action movie. All I knew was the director and that Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson—both of whom I really like—were in it.

I am speechless at how much I already love A House of Dynamite. Seeing at how amazing my experience was from being in the dark from the get go I'll say as little as possible about the plot.

Everything starts out at the 49th Missile Defense Battalion in Fort Greely, Alaska. A regular day for a set of young military—led by Anthony Ramos' (Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Twisters) Major Daniel Gonzalez—turns slowly, step-by-horrifying-step, into a living nightmare as an unspeakable threat takes shape and looks more and more inevitable. I felt the horror as it progressively gripped each on-screen character and the realization—with each step more real—that something potentially unstoppable, a real nightmare scenario, is actually taking place sets in like a cold razor.

The film plays the 20-minute long escalation of events in near real-time and repeats it from the point of view of 4 sets of characters. After Fort Greely experiences the unfolding horror we are taken to Rebecca Ferguson's (Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, Silo) communications officer Captain Olivia Walker. She starts her day at home with her husband and her feverish son in Washington DC, makes her way into the Situation Room and gradually experiences the same horrifying events. Just like Major Daniel Gonzalez, she is competent, highly trained, focused and makes fast and appropriate decisions. And yet—the horror sets in as the threat seems unstoppable. The pale, incredulous and wet-eyed faces in the Situation Room as we move matter-of-factly from Defcon 4 to Defcon 2 was an absolute gut punch.

Again, A House of Dynamite tells the very same event in near real-time from 4 different points of view, each time higher in the chain of command. It is the exact same events so by the time the first round ends and the second begins we actually already know where this is going. And yet the chilling effect that the threat— I don't want to spoil it, but it is a very real and horrifying scenario—has on each character's life, the impact on their families, their inability to stop the advancing menace, their both sudden and slow realizations that our world may not be the same ever again is what sells the movie to me. This is a journey into the life of people who set out for a regular day and are plunged into an unspeakable nightmare and need to make quick and impossible decisions. The script by Noah Oppenheim (Jackie, Zero Day) plays it by alternatiing between family drama, strategic decisions and military jargon. It feels like it could happen to all of us tomorrow. As it probably can.

I really don't want to spoil too much as part of what I enjoyed was knowing nothing about where this was going and being drawn in—and gutted at a visceral level—at each step. I won't even say who Idris Elba plays, but I will say he appears in the 4th act in an absolutely perfect role that highlights both his charisma and human weaknesses. He and Rebecca Ferguson are the 2 stand-outs of A House of Dynamite for me. But this is an ensemble cast with a lot to offer. Gabriel Basso—whom I didn't know much as I didn't know Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker—was a revelation and brings a lot of energy and earnestness to the events as Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington. I loved Jared Harris and he, Greta Lee, Anthony Ramos and Tracy Letts—the general in charge of STRATCOM (United States Strategic Command)—provide the other standout performances. I also really liked Jason Clarke, even though I much prefer him in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Volker Bertelmann - whose work I knew from The Amateur, Conclave and A Sacrifice and who also won the Oscar for All Quiet on the Western Front - provides an elegant and nail-biting score which to me was the perfect companion for the tight editing by Kirk Baxter—The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo—and the detailed, dry and unsettling script by Noah Oppenheim, creator of Zero Day, a far more light-hearted but very engaging show that also entertains a grounded and apocalyptic scenario.

I really loved A House of Dynamite. If there is one detail I am not 100% on board with it is the choice to again have a washed-out and flat palette. Barry Ackroyd shot stunners like The Hurt Locker and The Wind that Shakes the Barley, along with United 93 and Captain Phillips, so we know he does naturally go for a bland, documentary-style tone that heightens the drama of real-life—or realistic, in this case—events. I love that style and I feel like in 2008 it was groundbreaking and revolutionary. Today for me it just happens to fall too much in line with the bland aesthetic streamers are pushing for—A House of Dynamite is produced by Netflix—and even though I see how that photography style fits the tone of the film... I just wish he had gone for something more out there. With that being said let's be clear that this is the royal version of that drab look: the vanilla skies at Fort Greely, the cold-steel atmosphere of the Situation Room, the sun glistening like ice on the motorcades. Yes there is way too much washed out photography out there now, but Barry Ackroyd is the king of that look. And the final and heartbreaking image of the movie is near-perfect.

A House of Dynamite is a thriller. Not an action movie. The unnerving tension arises from seeing every-day, relatable characters—most of them in high-functioning military and government positions—set out for a routine day and slowly realize, at the same time as we do, that a small series of events can set off a living, unescapable nightmare.

Kathryn Bigelow hit 2 home runs with The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, Then she made Detroit—which was amazing but didn't resonate with audiences and critics. She took a well deserved 8-year break and she is now back with one of the most tense thrillers I have seen in months, and one that is still echoing in me 2 days after I saw it. And that I feel will for months, probably years.

A House of Dynamite is out in theaters on October 10 and on Netflix on October 24