A House of Dynamite (2025)
As Calvin J. Candie put it, what first seized my curiosity to watch the film was the teaser. To set the scene: I was lollygagging with my wife at the Dunkirk screening, paying no mind to the trailers, partly because when I decide to watch a film, I don’t need a trailer to convince me, and partly because The Paris belongs to Netflix, which basically means every trailer is just Netflix selling Netflix, so I couldn’t care less.
That is, until an aerial shot of the Washington Monument at dawn rolled across the screen, paired with a measured narration — “Home… everyone you love, everyone you know…” Immediately, my mind activated like a sleeper agent, cataloging where I had heard it before. My internal media Rolodex spun and landed on Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot. I went, huh… and now my internal Denzel is activated, specifically Alonzo okay... okay...
What grabbed my attention were the ruthless simplicity of the billing cards. Crimson red paired with black typeface, likely Bebas Neue. It gave an immediate sense of order. Very official. Very militarized. Very administrative. Pure, literal red tape.
One billing read “FROM THE ACADEMY AWARD WINNING DIRECTOR OF THE HURT LOCKER” highlighted with a bass, somewhere around 20–10Hz. It was felt more than heard.
Then Sagan's narration continued: “…think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors…”.
Then cut to another billing: “AND ZERO DARK THIRTY”
Back to Sagan: “…so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.”
Then the final two billings: "NOT IF" & "WHEN"
I leaned toward my wife and whispered under my breath...
She couldn’t hear me, so I cupped my hand as a makeshift resonator and tried again...
The human mind, ever so corruptible. You perverted ghouls! I told her we’re watching this! She said no, not a fan of anxiety. For context, she still hasn’t recovered from Uncut Gems, bamboozled into thinking it was a Sandler family comedy. I countered with fish filet and fries afterward, chez les Golden Arches. She said make that two. The negotiation was brutal, high calories, but emotional casualties were minimal. Deal.
Now that I’ve watched it, I’m torn. I’m not going to revisit this film. Ever. And yet, it’s worth examining how it structures its narrative.
Pop quiz, hotshot!
An intercontinental ballistic missile is headed for Chicago. Nineteen minutes to annihilation. Defense Readiness Condition: DEFCON 2. What do you do? Unlike LAPD officer Jack Traven, director Kathryn Bigelow does not pause to trace its origin or parse the geopolitics. She cuts straight to the chase, leaving the deontological versus consequentialist moral framework completely out and that is a smart choice. But that very choice creates a new narrative obstacle.
How do you make visible the ontological weight suspended between might and must?
And what Bigelow chooses to dramatize is not the action itself, but the procedural choreography. It worked in The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty because those stories had closure. Whether one agrees with their politics or not, their historical framework lends authenticity to both the reconstruction and, by extension, the dramatization. House of Dynamite does not have that luxury. It’s built on a hypothetical, a “what if,” and that turns precision into performance, bureaus into bunkers, and meeting rooms into minefields. And that is where I am torn, between admiring the craft and wondering what it is all in service of.
I was engaged for the first half hour, until the impact — or the absence of it. Bigelow refuses to show it, cutting to black. Another smart choice. Yet that very choice creates another obstacle. Where do you go from here? The enfant terrible in me hoped the end credits would crawl, forcing the narrative to conclude in a deliberate breach of convention. The form itself collapses, reflecting the empty rigor of procedure and the unbearable weight of impending doom.
Think of the Tyler Durden's "You are not your job " montage where his declaiming is so intense that the celluloid tries to dislodge from the sprockets. Or Funny Games, the 1997 version. I won’t even say a word about it for those who haven’t watched it. But alas, it didn’t happen. Instead, the story loops back from different vantage points higher up the hierarchy in a triptych structure, and each return adds nothing.
Or, as The Killer would put it with measured eloquence…
In one respect,
I start to wonder if the procedural banality is the point. Bigelow layers visual metrics to give the apocalypse a face — maps, numbers, timers, acronyms, trajectories, an updated big screen that would put Operation Treadstone to shame. Push in any further on the DEFCON display and my lord, we’re touching the coils of the dot pixels, on our merry way to The Nebuchadnezzar. Every visual choice mirrors the system’s procedural logic. No matter where you look, you’re staring into the same abyss, a testament to human inadequacy in the face of our own creations. A shade of Promethean shame.
Within the human machinery, every attempt at communication rebounds upon itself. What you hear on one line, you see repeated on another. The editing turns recursive. It does not build suspense; it builds confinement. I am caught in the same informational loop as the characters, suspended between knowledge and impotence. That makes the film’s refusal of melodrama feel deliberate. Perhaps this paralysis is the meaning. Perhaps I am reading it wrong.
Yet in another respect,
I wonder why we can so easily accept the comforting fiction of the “what if,” but recoil when confronted with the reality of real destruction. We can imagine establishing communiqués with the unknown, time travel, finger snap, multiverses, but not the actual doomsday device that actually exists in our basement. Maybe the fiction isn’t an escape from reality. Maybe it’s what allows us to endure it.
From that perspective, A House of Dynamite feels lifeless, maybe even obscene to some, precisely because it removes the fiction. Like infidelity in a marriage, it doesn’t destroy the love; it exposes the illusion of the marriage itself, forcing us to confront the unbearable pathos behind the façade.
There is no catharsis here. No speeches. No grand gestures. No Dwayne the influencer. Only the procedural. The mechanical unfolding of the end itself. The film does not ask what would happen if the world ended; it asks what happens when there is no one left to narrate it.
That said...
It is a film and it is made for entertainment. But that doesn’t mean it can’t make you think, make you reflect, make you discuss, or even give you a chance to transcend. I do not expect every work of cinema to flip the bird at authority and light the world on fire. Still, the medium offers, as Žižek, one of my spirit animals, would say in his hypnotic, slushy suffering succotash lisp, “a peculiar power” that allows the juxtaposition of perspectives.
The inside view of a character making a choice. The outside view that allows the audience to witness the cascading consequences. When the moral framework is missing, as it is here for good reason, tension has to be made visible by other means. Only then do we feel the full weight of verisimilitude. The problem is that none of it matters if the film fails to hold you. Engagement is the first requirement. Without it, reflection, even if it could exist, is denied. A House of Dynamite fails spectacularly after the blueprint act.
The film’s greatest strength is its discipline and also its weakness. The instant the story begins its looping descent, I find myself severed from its pulse. Not once do they make me feel like people caught inside a system; they feel like actors portraying people caught inside a system. Every breath, every glance, every shift of posture feels rehearsed.
DCI John Luther is now the POTUS. His jacket isn’t wool, the tie hangs at the proper length, and his hands stay out of his pockets. Still, the frowns run rampant, and the habitual head scratches make their usual appearance. I was told Idris Elba was in the film and when I couldn't find him, I was screening this very tête-à-tête inside my tête.
Then we enter the realm of clichéd Americana. A character going through a divorce, another dealing with a breakup, a daughter in therapy who “needs her space from her Daddy” while Daddy pays the bills, and another character attending the Battle of Gettysburg reenactment with her son. Get it? Do you get it? No, do you fucking get it? 'Merica is fundamentally violent, born in violence, and as such, it is a society that structures even its leisure and family life around conflict.
Now, Bigelow, naturally, is smarter than this, and I, full disclosure, as impartial as any fanboy could be. She knows these images are ideological, yet here they are, perfectly packaged, certainly to feed the Netflix algorithm, spoon-feeding us our own fantasies while pretending to entertain. A win-win.
All that remains is for Gopinath to announce the overture, throat fucking with connotative descriptors attributing the project before the screening.
Welcome to civilization on the brink! Presented by the middle management of a streaming service, co-presented by the sacred three-letter casting system, powered by political cowardice, fueled by PR — all for, as Jared Harris says in the film "A fucking coin flip? This is what we get for fifty billion dollars? A fucking coin flip?"
At this point, I can feel myself slipping into a rant, so I’ll wrap this up. But before I go, a bit of humor. There’s this decade old Bill Burr bit that kept screening in my head during the final act. I kid you not, DCI John Luther’s Lieutenant Commander actually says “bad guys” while discussing nuclear strategy. Meanwhile, John Luther drops a quote he once heard on a podcast, all while asking for his wife’s opinion on what to do, who happens to be vacationing in the Serengeti. Civilization collapses, but the Wi-Fi still works.
Thanks for reading,
V.