It’s been a long while since Kathryn Bigelow’s last stint in the director’s chair, and A House of Dynamite (2025) doesn’t just mark her first film in nearly a decade but also her return to propulsive political thrillers. Films like the Best Picture-winning The Hurt Locker (2008) are renowned for their immersive battleground atmosphere and brutal intensity; Bigelow takes a somewhat different approach in the sandbox with A House of Dynamite. The results couldn’t be more of a mixed bag.
The film’s attempt at pulse-pounding tension starts well enough following the U.S. response in the wake of a missile launch sent directly to Chicago. With each passing minute, though, the film loses its grip on the searing anxiety Bigelow is capable of. Any tangible meaning to the movie’s ultimate theme or reason for a change of character perspective within each act is ultimately left in the weeds. This, paired with utterly bizarre cinematography choices, makes A House of Dynamite one of the biggest disappointments of 2025, even if it’s never completely devoid of what Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim set out to accomplish.
A House of Dynamite follows multiple perspectives on the same scenario: a potential nuclear war following a missile launch sent towards the United States. The film follows a team of technicians led by Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos), the command center led by Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson), and a series of war rooms featuring Tracy Letts, Jared Harris, Greta Lee, and Idris Elba as the President of the U.S. himself.
Naturally, all of their worlds are turned upside down by an attack that seemingly came out of thin air. With no clue of who sent the missile or the reason why it was sent, the country sits on a ticking clock before the brink of disaster, looking for any avenue that could prevent the potential demise of the human race.
“Not If. When.” is the tagline for A House of Dynamite, and it effectively captures the central feeling of paranoia conveyed. While they are obviously different films, the movie is in a similar vein to Oppenheimer (2023), exploring the fears of situations like the Cold War and nuclear annihilation. At first, Bigelow pretty handily nails this stomach-churning feeling.
Volker Bertelmann’s score (although eerily similar to his work in 2024’s Conclave) adds a never-ending dread to every scene. It helps when you have such committed performances from Ferguson and Gabriel Basso in a standout phone call sequence with the Russian prime minister. The entire cast, really, gives their all in trying to showcase this terror firsthand. Unfortunately, just like a deflating balloon, A House of Dynamite continuously loses air the longer it goes on with a derivative bag of tricks.
One of the film’s central problems lies with the structure of the narrative itself. The film follows the same scenario of the missile attack from the three perspectives of command: Olivia Walker’s team, Anthony Brady’s (Letts) team, and the president’s perspective. While a shift between each subsequent act showing the same events could be creative in concept, the movie never does anything interesting with it. Instead, it treads familiar waters until they grow stale rather than more tense.
There’s never a moment between these views where we learn something meaningful about a character besides basic plot beats, not only further deflating any momentum the film had going for it, but progressively making the film feel meaningless by the time it wraps up. Bigelow wants us to be terrified of what a future like this could hold, but this message loses its way. The utterly abrupt ending doesn’t help matters in the slightest, either.
Bigelow’s work with cinematographer Barry Ackroyd is also extremely puzzling. While there’s the occasional image of depth in between the segments of the narrative, nearly every scene is stitched together with zooms, shaky cams, and flat mockumentary-like filmmaking. It’s as if it were an episode of The Office (2005-2013). These choices are so out of place within the tone of the film itself that it actively takes me out of any scene I was potentially hooked into. It’s a genuine hindrance to everything the film could have potentially stuck the landing on.
A House of Dynamite features some of Bigelow’s hallmarks that would constitute a post-apocalyptic thrill ride of fear, but the film is never able to sustain them to make for a fulfilling experience. Not only does its dull look and uneven structure hinder it from providing pulse-pounding tension, but its lack of substance, particularly in its nuclear war messaging, makes it ring hollow as a whole. It’s never a painful watch, but A House of Dynamite is, without a doubt, squandered potential on almost every front.
Review Courtesy of Joshua Mbonu
Feature Image Credit to Netflix via Collider