Catherine Bigelow has never been afraid of tension, especially in recent years, with films like his Oscar-winning The injury record, Zero Dark ThirtyAnd Detroit. The passage of time and growing uncertainty have been at the heart of his work over the past two decades, all in films that address the politics of the time. By doing this, Bigelow’s films felt urgent and powerful, an anxious response to our current times.
Bigelow’s first film in eight years, A house of dynamiteseems well within his wheelhouse, and while Marc Boal wrote his last three filmshis last one comes from Noah Oppenheim – writer of Jackie And The maze runner. A house of dynamite focuses on the type of tension that Bigelow has become known for, as we watch a missile head toward America without knowing who sent it. But while A house of dynamite begins as a gripping thriller, as the film progresses, and we begin to see the conception and structure of what this film is, Bigelow’s latest loses its pressure and feels more like an unusual experiment than a gripping drama which never reaches the heights of Bigelow’s finest works.
What is “A House of Dynamite” about?
As A house of dynamite begins, we follow Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson), who works at the White House and monitors threats. A military base in Alaska has spotted what appears to be a missile heading toward the United States, and Walker and his team must figure out how to deal with this imminent threat from an unknown sender. For the first third of A house of dynamitewe stay in the room with Captain Walker, while she chats with other teams and colleagues, trying to figure out how to proceed with a missile that could kill millions of Americans. It’s a truly nail-biting scenario that Bigelow and Oppenheim presentand it’s even more disturbing when we see how easily such a thing could happen and how helpless we would be with so little time to react.
But then, A house of dynamite takes a turn. We then follow the event through the eyes of Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington (Gabriel Basso), who is new to his position and appears to be the only one willing to provide clarification to the president on how to proceed. A house of dynamite will change again later, this time following the President of the United States, played by Idris Elba. Each time one of these changes occurs, we see different angles of what such an attack would look likeas we piece together what the other characters did during this time. Some characters make their way through all three segments, such as General Anthony Brody (Tracy Letts), who wants the president to retaliate before the country becomes an easy target, as well as Defense Secretary Reid Baker (Jared Harris), who initially only appears in video calls, but then becomes a major player in the final act.
“The structure of a dynamite house is impressive, but imperfect
As a narrative construction, A house of dynamite is a fascinating way to look at this situation through several different perspectives. Essentially, seeing the same story three different ways each time gives us more information and fleshes out the details surrounding this haunting moment. It’s a technical marvel for the editor Kirk Baxterwho has already won Oscars for his work on The social network And The girl with the dragon tattooas he interweaves all of these characters and their stories into a larger narrative. As we see all the pieces come together in the final tale, It’s really impressive how all these elements work as one.
However, by trying this experiment, A house of dynamite sacrifices a compelling story for its unusual training. The first time we watch this story unfold with Ferguson’s Captain Walker, it’s one of the most intense films released in theaters this year. But once the story starts again, and then again, and you start predicting where this story is going to take us, A house of dynamiteThe concept of begins to wear out, with each new variation lessening its impact. By the time you realize that Bigelow’s film won’t feature a third act or answers to its biggest questions, A house of dynamite starts to drag on more than this story seemed in this first version of the story.
Although it is remarkable to see how A house of dynamite folds its stories in on itself, as we learn more details about what’s going on, it also loses steam significantly with each new release. Things that seemed intense and thrilling at first become routine and, sometimes, even laughable. A discussion during which characters utter the phrase: “This is crazy!” ” followed by “No, sir, that’s reality,” is questionable the first time, and downright ridiculous the second. Added to the frustration is the score of Volker Bertelmanncomposer for Conclave And All is calm on the Western Front. Like those scores, Bertelmann reuses a few notes as a musical motif to heighten the tension, but here it only seems absurd as the film progresses. A house of dynamite both impress with how each new retelling fleshes out this story even more, but also manage to become more and more frustrating and ridiculous with each new release.
Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson are both solid in ‘A House of Dynamite’
The casting is also very good A house of dynamitebecause they are asked to react to the most horrible moment they will experience in their lives. Ferguson is particularly strong here, reacting to this moment as both a worried mother and wife who wants to keep her family safe, but also as a person in a position of power who must maintain control. Elba is also brilliant as the president who finds himself faced with a situation he never thought would happen. Through these two performances, we see the humanity of what this attack means to them as a person, but also how it will impact the world as a whole. Despite how this movie handles multiple characters in so many different storylines, it also means we don’t get enough of some of these actors. Especially given how the film is structured, we don’t really get a resolution to any of these stories, which ends up being frustrating.
But that frustration is part of the problem, because we are put in the shoes of those trying to stop this missile from hitting. It’s undoubtedly a clever format in theory, but in execution, this results in a film that does not seem finished. At the end of A house of dynamitewe are not frustrated by the lack of answers or conclusions; we are frustrated by the fragmentation and incompleteness of the story we have been told. As it tries to make its format work, it quickly loses its tension and urgency, feeling more like an exercise in exploring what such an incident would realistically look like in our world (albeit one with an organized, cohesive government). A house of dynamite starts off explosively, but unfortunately it eventually runs out of steam.
A house of dynamite hits theaters on October 10, before releasing on Netflix on October 24.
- Release date
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October 3, 2025
- Runtime
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113 minutes
- Director
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Catherine Bigelow
- Writers
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Noah Oppenheim
- Producers
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Brian Bell, Greg Shapiro
- Kathryn Bigelow knows how to build tension, and does so quite a bit in A House of Dynamite.
- Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson stand out in a strong cast.
- The structure of A House of Dynamite is compelling, but ultimately doesn’t pay off as much as it should.
- The repetitive nature of the story can be unintentionally questionable at times.
- A House of Dynamite is full of first and second acts, with no compelling third act.
