Film Review — A House of Dynamite

Dr. Strangelove (1964) without the black comedy. That’s probably not the most appealing tagline for Kathryn Bigelow’s potential nuclear disaster thriller, but it’s a fairly accurate summary, give or take deranged impotent airbase commanders who “went and did a silly thing”.

Actually, there may well be such an individual behind events in A House of Dynamite, but we never see them. We only see events from the perspective of the US, who detect an incoming ICBM, but for technical reasons, can’t ascertain its point of origin. It might be Russia, China, or North Korea. It might be state-sanctioned, or it might be, as they speculate, a rogue commander who had a bad day and pushed the button, per the aforementioned Jack D Ripper scenario.

At first, America thinks it might be a test. But the trajectory suggests otherwise, and soon all hell is breaking loose in the Pentagon, the White House, and at a counterstrike post, whose job is to intercept the missile, despite essentially coin-toss odds of success. Akin to trying to hit a bullet with a bullet, as Noah Oppenheim’s screenplay puts it. Meanwhile, panic begins to set in amid government institutions once rumour mills are inevitably set in motion.