Only 60 minutes before the press screening of Julian Schnabel In The Hand of Dante so I must be brief:
The house in Kathryn Bigelow and Noah Oppenheim‘s A House of Dynamite (Netflix, 10.10 theatrically) is the world itself…the entire interconnected realm…everyone…all the countries, all the leaders…and no one, it turns out, is fully up to dealing with impending Armageddon…not technologically, not emotionally or psychologically…so the movie is a firehouse alarm…a serious warning…a reality check from holy-shitville.
We’re all living on the edge of terrible destruction, Bigelow and Oppenheim are basically saying. How close or imminent is it? Very close, closer than we think, and our ability to protect Chicago or Washington or New York City, not to mention retaliate against the suspected aggressor[s], who might be our friends in the DPRK, is not what anyone would call formidable.
Bigelow’s film is therefore not a 21st Century version of Sidney Lumet‘s Fail Safe (although it’s certainly Fail Safe-adjacent) or Stanley Kubrick‘s Dr. Strangelove without the laughs…because unlike these mid ‘60s thrillers, it doesn’t…well, I guess I shouldn’t spoil.
But it’s basically “you think there’s some kind of response to an incoming missile that might save us? Or at least allow for semblance of a future? Think again.”
