“That’s great, it starts with an
earthquake, birds and snakes
An aeroplane, and Lenny Bruce is not afraid
Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn
World serves its own needs, don't misserve your own needs”
Nobody
knows where it came from. That’s the reality pervading all three sections of
director Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite. A nuclear missile is
headed for the United States of America (specifically Chicago) and nobody knows
who launched it. Each Dynamite segment follows a different U.S. government
sector reacting to the news that the unthinkable is happening. First, audiences
follow Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) in the White House Situation
Room as she and her team try tracking the ICBM and Amerca's plans to eliminate
it.
Next,
United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) denizens like General Anthony Brody
(Tracy Letts) and s Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington (Gabriel
Basso) are shown taking radically different tactics to this nuclear launch.
Brody wants to fire on all foreign nuclear arsenals and ask questions later.
Baerington, meanwhile, wants to negotiate and exude vulnerability with overseas
leaders. Finally, there's a storyline centered on an unnamed President of the
United States (Idris Elba). His day begins with shooting hoops with young kids
before becoming a nightmare as he gradually realizes what's about to happen to
ten million Americans.
These
are the lives Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim follow throughout A
House of Dynamite. Right away, a key flaw emerges: there’s no variety in
the existences chronicled here. It isn't just that 95% of the fictional individuals work in government jobs. They're also all buttoned up and professional. None of them have ragged edges or varying demeanors. Sidney
Lumet's extraordinary Fail Safe, which also chronicled an impending U.S.
nuclear disaster, lent vivid, wildly divergent personalities to its various characters. That included characters with high-ranking jobs in the American government.
Dynamite’s various politicians and nuclear
experts, meanwhile, are excessively polished. The greatest on-screen flaw in
these characters is that they munch on Doritos at their workstation when they’re
not supposed to. Everyone’s loyal to their partner. Every child they pass has a smile and
a cheerful wave. The worst thing about the president is he’s a harmless “narcissist,”
but less so than his predecessors. Rather than having a nuclear apocalypse
intrude on a recognizably real world and morally complex humans, A House of
Dynamite has tragedy befall hollow automatons lifted from a U.S. Army recruitment
ad.
The
characters here are such a snore that not even exceedingly talented artists
like Greta Lee (woefully wasted) and Jared Harris can lend much life to them.
There's also the problem that every single white boy under 40 in this feature
looks like a series of indistinguishable clones. Good luck discerning Gabriel Basso, Jonah
Hauer-King, Kyle Allen, and other guys from each other. One of them needed to
wear a hat, have blue hair, or a tattoo, something to make it clear who the
hell they are. That’s a microcosm of how A House of Dynamite focuses on
so many human beings yet none of them register as people.
It's
also puzzling that Oppenheim’s central narrative structure doesn’t go anywhere
unexpected or interesting. In the first segment, a group video call is introduced
featuring subsequently important characters like the POTUS, Brady, and Baerington.
It’s no surprise that these lives intersect nor are there interesting
revelations nestled in shifting focus onto their storylines. Compare that to Weapons,
which had fun details like a random man outside a liquor store asking beleaguered teacher Justine for bus ticket money…only for that guy to later be revealed as key character James.
Oppenheim’s
script is too respectful and stuffy for elements like that. Pursuing pervasive
gravitas, though, just instills A House of Dynamite with a chilly
exterior. It’s impossible to latch onto these people who never register as human
beings. Absolutely terrible dialogue, namely the POTUS beginning a dramatic soliloquy
with the phrase “I was listening to a podcast…”, hammers home the film’s
endless writing problems. This movie truly is what would happen if the
screenwriter of The Maze Runner and a Divergent sequel tried his
hand at writing a nuclear paranoia thriller. I Live in Fear, this is
not.
“Six o'clock, TV hour, don't get
caught in foreign tower
Slash and burn, return, listen to
yourself churn
Lock him in uniform, book burning,
blood letting
Every motive escalate, automotive
cinerate
Light a candle, light a votive,
step down, step down
Watch your heel crush, crushed,
uh-oh, this means
No fear, cavalier renegade steer
clear
A tournament, a tournament, a
tournament of lies
Offer me solutions, offer me
alternatives
And I decline”
With her 2009 Best Picture Oscar
winning movie The Hurt Locker, Bigelow established her new go-to cinema verité
filmmaking style mimicking shaky-cam documentary camerawork. This approach
emulated the idea that audiences were in the Iraq War terrain right with Hurt
Locker's characters, with explosions and other events "jostling"
the camera. Lending that approach to A House of Dynamite already makes no
sense because the film takes place in Washington D.C. and various steady
military bases. There are no exploding bombs or other elements that could
inspire quivering camerawork. That’s the whole point of the story…the nuclear
missile hasn’t landed yet.
It's not even like the barrage of quick
cuts, sudden zoom-ins, and ceaselessly quivering camerawork is supposed to
convey terror at impending nuclear Armageddon. Bigelow and cinematographer Barry
Ackroyd (whom Bigelow previously worked with on Locker and Detroit)
capture pre-missile launch idyllic scenes like Walker playing with her kid or
Cathy Rogers (Moses Ingram) cheerfully waltzing into work in the same fashion.
To make matters worse, A House of Dynamite has
that unmistakably bright and excessively digital sheen of typical Netflix
original movies and TV shows.
Even Bigelow has succumbed
to these cinematography norms. Random shots of people in cars or government
offices look indistinguishable from similar images from Space Force or The
Gray Man. Not only does this make House of Dynamite look off-putting,
it also undercuts the entire point of that mockumentary shooting style. The cinema
verité approach is supposed to make audiences feel like they’re watching
reality as it unfolds. However, the Netflix lighting upends any tactility or lived-in
qualities in the visuals. In Bigelow’s newest movie, you get the worst of both
worlds. The lighting is bad, but it’s also realized through hyperactive editing
and messy blocking. Love it or hate it, Bigelow’s ramshackle shooting style
previously had purpose to it. Not here.
“The other night I dreamt of
knives, continental drift divide
Mountains sit in a line, Leonard
Bernstein
Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce and
Lester Bangs
Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly
bean, boom
You symbiotic, patriotic, slam but
neck”
Speaking of thoughtless, one-size-fits-all artistry, Volker Bertelmann's House
of Dynamite score is a mess. This feature's so proud of his orchestral
tracks that the opening Netflix logo is even preceded by 15-ish seconds of
Bertelmann's music playing against a black screen. That confidence is woefully
misplaced. Much like with his repetitive All Quiet on the Western Front
work, Bertelmann can only communicate ominousness through "LOUD
NOISES!!" and battering audiences with one uninspired leitmotif.
Low-pitched string instruments
dominate the sonic landscape and there’s no musical variety as the script jumps
around from one location to the next. A Battle of Gettysburg recreation has the
same score as White House Situation Room denizens reacting to unspeakably bad
news. Bertelmann’s score is downright terrible, but at least it provides a
useful encapsulation of why A House of Dynamite doesn’t work. It too is
one uninspired note hit ceaselessly for 112 minutes.
It's shocking to remember that
Bigelow’s earlier genre films like Near Dark and Point Break
oozed such exciting, subversive energy. Those titles were as unpredictable as A
House of Dynamite is determined to ruffle no feathers. It doesn’t present a
challenging or unique vision of America under duress, while its visual and
sonic sensibilities are insultingly familiar. The only way this movie really
works is as an extensive advertisement for the latest iPhone models. Every
single character in this universe possesses these unwieldy devices and
constantly keeps their back camera (and accompanying Apple logo) proudly facing
the camera. Tim Cook will be pleased. Shouldn’t a filmmaker of Bigelow’s
caliber aim higher than that?
It's the end of the world as we
know it (It's time I had some time alone)
It's the end of the world as we
know it (It's time I had some time alone)
It's the end of the world as we
know it (It's time I had some time alone)
And I feel fine (I feel fine)
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