House Of Dynamite is a Netflix original film that is both a political fantasy and thriller. It was directed by Kathryn Bigelow and it was written by Noah Oppenheim. It starred Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts with some other notable actors.
I see House of Dynamite as an intense thriller film with an unusual narrative technique hence why this movie was criticised in a negative way. The viewers were not satisfied with the directorial style. Some complained about its unresolved and weak ending. Only a few were able to get the narrative technique and the directorial style Bigelow used for this movie. It's unique and it was unexpected.
The storyline of this movie revolves around when an unknown missile was launched at the United States of America. Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson), the oversight officer for the White House Situation Room begins to lead the hunt and race to stop the unknown missile, to find out which country launched it, to find out why, to identify the enemy of the country and to keep the citizens of the country safe.
Olivia worked with the Pentagon, POTUS (Idris Elba) and various commands of the armed forces to solve the missile problem before a war erupts. The main goal was to stop the missile attack and stop the start of a war or best avoid one. Was the mission successful?
My Review And Rating.
I saw this movie last year when it was still in the cinemas and I have been so reluctant to put out the review for a very long time. Sometimes, the title of a movie can make one decide not to watch. This movie was like that for me. However, I saw this movie because of its director, cast, and snippet of the plot.
Idris Elba is one of my favorite actors, and I'd hate to miss any of his works. These gave me high expectations about the movie regardless of what my intuition was telling about the title of the movie.
The first time I saw it at the cinema, it was bad. Although it started well and kept me on the edge of my seat, towards the ending, when Rebecca Ferguson disappeared from the movie I immediately felt uncomfortable and I began to lose focus. Then the introduction of various perspectives came into play. My first thought was, *”What the hell is going on? Where is my suspense, tension and mystery? Where is Rebecca? (in Klaus’ voice) And why is the Night Agent guy yapping quite a lot of words and pissing me off? But I am a viewer that loves to believe that there is always light at the end of the tunnel. So I kept on watching but after 10mins or so, I was disappointed. But then I received a work call and I left the cinema. That was my cinema experience.
Two weeks later I decided to try again, probably this time, it would be different. Was it? Anyways, watching it the second time was not the same as the initial watch. It was more of watching to understand why Kathryn Bigelow decided to direct this movie like this. I was curious as to why because considering my experience with the movie The Hurt Locker I didn't expect this movie would have a disappointing ending which many or can I say 70% of viewers complained about, but I can see why the director was attracted to this script.
From my second watch, I think Bigelow was trying to achieve something different and unique with this movie but a lot of the audience missed it. In my own opinion, Bigelow tried to make her audience understand that the plot of this movie is not just about nuclear disaster or start of a war, but it is also about how people in the seat of power make decisions that could change the lives of billions of people in a seconds under extreme pressure.
For me, I would say don't quickly judge or cancel out this movie, but I must confess I did at first. The problem was that; the first two acts were so high and pumped with tension so much that the audience were so curious as to how all will end and how all the loose ends would be resolved. Too bad. I wish the tension and suspense of all the acts were managed properly and maybe this film would have been impressive or blockbuster. In the end, I enjoyed it. It was good, misjudged, harshly criticised and the ending wasn't an end that would stick with you.
Rating this movie, I will give it a 7 out 10 stars. It was a good movie, supercharged with tension from the start, but failed to carry on or keep the attention of its audience towards the ending. It was good for me regardless of the ending. How was this movie for you?
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[Source](https://screenrant.com)
I watch A House of Dynamite over the weekend, I thought I had put out this post early this week. Honestly I dont know how some are calling this Netflix best movie of the year, for me this movie makes me feel mostly frustration being completely honest. The thing is this movie starts so damn strong with all these government people are trying to figure out what the hell to do when a nuclear missile gets launched at the United States and NOBODY knows who did it or why it happened in the first place. Maybe like the first thirty minutes was intense as fuck, director Kathryn Bigelow seem to know very well how to make you feel the pressure and the chaos, like you are sitting right there in the room with Rebecca Ferguson and Idris Elba, and all these other people who are about to lose their minds. The cast is absolutely loaded too and may be why I was expecting way more, you got Jared Harris, Anthony Ramos, Gabriel Basso, Tracy Letts is there being all serious, Moses Ingram also shows up for a bit and honestly everybody is doing solid work, making it feel believable and scary as hell. But then somewhere around the middle, the movie does this annoying thing where it keeps jumping back in time, to show you the exact same events but from different peoples point of view, for me it just killed all that momentum, they spent so long building up in the beginning. I understand what Bigelow was trying to accomplish here, showing how all these separate groups of people who are dealing with the same crisis, at the same exact moment but it just made me start losing interest real quick because I kept waiting for something new to happen and nothing like we are running in circles, just the same stuff over and over again, from slightly different angles.
[Source](https://tinyurl.com/e4ef9acy)
The whole setup is pretty straightforward when you break it down, a nuclear warhead gets detected mid flight, heading straight for Chicago where like ten million plus people live and work, and everyone in power has maybe eighteen minutes to figure out if they can stop it, who launched it?? whether they should blow somebody else up in return??. Rebecca Fergusons character Olivia Walker works the room trying to get answers and figure this whole thing out and shes basically our main eyes into this mess for that first chunk of the movie, shes got a sick kid at home, who needs to see a doctor but she also has to get to work, because of how important is her job on this entire situation. This is where things work out at first because you can tell how she has to make decisions based on her family and everyone else, you cant be selfish here because they all might get evaporated, while shes trying to do her job and save millions of other families I cant stop thinking how does that feel as anyone else mind would be split in two sides when it comes to who is first, her family or the rest of the city??. I do not think the government would tell regular people that a nuke is about to land on a major city because that would cause total chaos in the streets. The movie does a good job making you think about that kind of stuff, like what would really go down if this scenario played out in real life, would we even know until it was too late or would there be some kind of warning, that most likely would be too late and still create total chaos.
[Source](https://tinyurl.com/e4ef9acy)
[Source](https://tinyurl.com/e4ef9acy)
The problem starts when the movie goes over half an hour in, and things are getting really tense, like they want to start to recicle the scene, because the missile might actually hit, and people might actually die, and then boom it cuts to black and jumps back to the start of the same time period, but now we are seeing it through different characters eyes, at different levels of the government, in different locations. All that tension just evaporates instantly, it stops being as interesting as it goes along because you kind of feel like you have been there and done that already, you know exactly what is going to happen, every step until a certain point, because you literally just watched it happen twenty minutes ago. The movie never really spends enough time with any one specific characters to have some proper character building and make you care or root for them, so by the time you get to the final thirty or forty minutes, you are just going with the flow, waiting for it to end, I watch this with my wife and that was her very first critic after the movie ended. It honestly feels like this would have worked way better, as a thirty minute short movie or maybe just a different structure entirely, if the whole thing was just that first segment, playing out in real time without jumping around, I probably would have loved it, because that part was very well done with tons of tension building until that cut to black moment. Instead we get this back and forth time jump thing and I know Im starting to rant but Im so disappointed, three separate times I had to watch the same story play over, from the Pentagon, then from some general trying to get intel on the missile, then from the president played by Idris Elba trying to make an impossible decision. I have always thought jumping back and forward in time on a movie makes it interesting but they just abuse this hack, because this usually comes with awesome discoveries or hidden details about the characters decisions, but this time it does not make up for how repetitive and drawn out it all feels.
[Source](https://tinyurl.com/e4ef9acy)
[Source](https://tinyurl.com/e4ef9acy)
Now the ending, that was fucking disappointing, after everything that came before it the movie just kind of stops, it does not end it just stops and showed directed by Kathryn Bigelow, it was a very big WTF moment for me like where the rest go?? thats how we are ending this thing??. It wraps up and was so unsatisfying that leaves you with nothing, no resolution, no payoff, no emotional punch and that is not something you expect from Kathryn Bigelow, because I remember her because of the best endings in movies I have seen is Zero Dark Thirty, where the final moments are absolutely perfect and leave you with such gratification. Instead we just get an ambiguous cut to black, where we never find out if Chicago gets destroyed, we never find out what the president decides to do about retaliation, we just see some FEMA person played by Moses Ingram, arriving at some nuclear bunker in Pennsylvania, which I guess means something bad happened but who knows. The movie needed way more suspense in that final half hour. There are also way too many characters crammed into this thing for how short it is, making the movie splinter too much, by the end I felt like I did not really know anybody in the story, because we never spent enough quality time, with any single person for them to stick in your memory. I look this one up and it seems that both Noah Oppenheim and Kathryn Bigelow agree on this ending on purpose to "force" the discussion about nuclear weapons and everything in between, but honestly WTF this is not a documentary, you want to push that kind of message and spark that kind of conversation do it with other type of material, I fkn hate it because everything started so good.
A House of Dynamite had a great formula from the start, a stacked cast doing great work, a terrifying premise that feels so good with real life problems given the world we live in today, and a director who knows how to build tension based on her previous work. But then it shoots itself in the foot with this repetitive structure that drains all the energy that is has generated for the first half hour and an ending that feels like they just gave up or ran out of ideas or as some articles online mention they did it on purpose to spark up a conversation of Nuclear Weapons proliferation, I wanted to love this movie so bad but it just could not stick the landing, I honestly thought I was about to watch something special with Rebecca Ferguson calling the shots. If you got Netflix and you got some time to kill, I would say give it a watch because its not terrible and Bigelow does not make movies very often so its worth watching he work, but go in with lower expectations than you normally would for Rebecca Ferguson and maybe you will not be as let down as I was. For me this sits somewhere in the middle, not good enough to recommend but not bad enough to tell people to skip it entirely, its just kind of meh, which is probably the worst thing a movie about nuclear war can be. I am giving it a six out of ten, maybe a seven if I am feeling generous, but damn I really hoped for so much more from this one.
