Recommendations of the Editorial team
Even the blocky opening credits have the force of a club: “At the end of the Cold War, the ruling powers decided that fewer nuclear weapons were better.” Then a new plaque: “This time is over.” And then a small military car with a machine gun mounted on the roof drives into a fenced area in Alaska. In the control room, a soldier munches on potato chips. He shows his colleague sitting next to him a note: “Have a nice day!” The camouflage jackets hang over the office chairs. Outside are the silos with the rockets. The morning is dawning.
Kathryn Bigelow has made many sophisticated, realistic and technically masterful films. She won two Oscars in 2010 for directing and producing for “The Hurt Locker.” But “A House Of Dynamite” is an even better film. It’s about a rocket attack on the USA: the missile hits in 19 minutes. It can no longer be intercepted. It’s not known who launched the rocket – Russia, China, North Korea?
We see the same events from three perspectives connected through a video conference. We see the White House security room. We see a reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg. We see the Minister of Defense. And finally we see the president greeting a basketball team made up of girls at a school. “In The Air Tonight” thunders from the tape while the charismatic man played by Idris Elba throws at the basket. Then they take him out of the hall. The officer with the bag sits next to him in the car. The options folder looks like a colorful menu.
A few minutes for a life and death decision
The POTUS’s place on the screen remains black. And at that moment, as he sits in the car on the way to the helicopter, Idris Elba’s face suddenly takes on a dreamy, lost expression. He’s only a few minutes away from having to make a decision. “We will have lost Chicago in a few minutes,” says the general, whom Tracy Letts plays like a general.
In the helicopter, the young officer and the president look at the menus. The authentication code is in a clip with banknotes. “It reminds me of my student days,” says the president. The officer crosses himself. The President reads the code aloud. “Your orders, Mr. President!”
Noah Oppenheim wrote this film. He was president of NBC News. Oppenheim invented a small toy dinosaur that Olivia Walker, the officer in the security room, received from her son that morning. The Gettysburg Battle is perhaps a little too bright symbolically, although it does illustrate the title of the second episode, “A Bullet Hits a Bullet.” And what could be a soldier’s last call to his mother may be cheesy – and perhaps not. Because he doesn’t tell her.
But basically “A House Of Dynamite” is an unsentimental film because Kathryn Bigelow’s war and action films do not have the expectation of reconciliation and harmony of Roland Emmerich’s apocalyptic films. Emmerich still has a good-natured wit on the edge. Bigelow shows the hint of tears on Rebecca Ferguson’s face as Captain Walker in the security room, then how she tenses her face, wipes away the tears and acts. Action is character, says this film.
At the end, buses drive into a mountain – an image we know from all apocalyptic films. They look like school buses. And the soldier in Alaska from the beginning vomits in front of the barracks.