Little of this plays to Bigelow's strengths. She previously starred in at least one gritty film about the nuclear crisis, the Soviet submarine thriller K-19: The Widowmaker (2002). But at her best she has a gift for making the passage of time feel free, hypnotic and poetically indeterminate rather than artificially manipulated and pressured. She is a master at subtly revealing the inner lives of real people doing their jobs in real working conditions. That's not something you can achieve with such a lively and superficial “24” cosplay, no matter how polished the DC production design is to accompany it. Even the title House of Dynamite is a surprise—a mouthful of metaphors, especially from a director whose previous film titles have often shown a penchant for terse, memorable language (Closer to Dark, Strange Days, Closer to Dark, Strange Days,Point break“).
Bigelow was often accused of being apolitical or, because of her fascination with the codes, rituals, and aesthetics of men at war, of promoting a fanatical fetishization of American militarism. In the larger bureaucratic panorama of “House of Dynamite,” it offers such a pessimistic view of the U.S. response to natural disaster, even with a more functional and competent government than the one we have now, that it is difficult to consider any of it propaganda—or, for that matter, politically specific. (Some character details suggest bipartisan associations: The woman briefing the White House press corps is a spitting image of Jen Psaki, former President Joe Biden's first press secretary. President Elbe is photographed with young basketball players when disaster strikes – a kinder version of the moment President George W. Bush first received word of the 11 attacks September during reading time at a Florida elementary school”Domestic goat.”)
In another important respect, House of Dynamite appears to be a decisive break with Bigelow's recent work. Two of her previous films were criticized for their use and depiction of violence: Zero Dark Thirty was accused of turning torture scenes into a defense of torture, andDetroit(2017), an underrated drama set during the civil rights era, has been criticized for exploiting the very horrors it sought to condemn. By contrast, House of Dynamite is devoid of on-screen bloodshed, right down to its muted conclusion. I counted one death – unexpectedly hilarious – but the looming massacre remains an off-screen abstraction and perhaps even a sign of fiction restraint.
Why then is it more like a nervous breakdown? I am not suggesting that Bigelow was intended to depict the destruction of a major metropolis and its population; for that we have Roland Emmerich. But a large-scale disaster epic might actually unsettle us more than this shaky camera exercise and whatever it thinks it does. Like last year's mediocre “September 5,” which half-dramatized the 1972 Munich Olympics bombings from the perspective of the ABC Sports crew, “House of Dynamite” inadvertently suggests that as a film genre, the control room thriller may be approaching its limits, with its clichés, subterfuges and histrionics. with stunts as cliched as those in any blockbuster.
It so happened that earlier this year a blockbuster was released that, without any pretense of realism, raised a chilling warning about an imminent nuclear disaster. “Mission: Impossible: Final Reckoning“” wasn't a particularly satisfying movie, but it did feature a sharp and thoughtful debate about what preemptive actions, if any, the president should take in the frightening eventuality of a villain with super-powered artificial intelligence seizing control of the world's nuclear arsenals. In its own outlandish style, the film captures the sum of all the fears that House of Dynamite is trying to convey: the horrors of uncontrolled spread, the uncertainty of how both enemies and allies will react, and the growing likelihood of global catastrophe. I have no idea how plausible this was; the thing was that it felt believable because director and co-writer Christopher McQuarrie brings it to life in vividly imagined fiction with unapologetic enthusiasm. Bigelow and Oppenheim seem to be aiming to create something much more than just entertainment, and, as a result, end up with something much less. ♦
