Official A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE Movie Trailer 2025
A political thriller about a White House response to ballistic missiles targeting Chicago. Starring Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson and Greta Lee. Release date is October 24.
Restrospecting Bigelow: THE HURT LOCKER (2008) won Best Picture and Bigelow won Best Director at the Oscars. ZERO DARK THIRTY, POINT BLANK garnered significant buzz and awards consideration.
Director Katherine Bigelow
Assessing a Netflix Film Soon to Be Seen
Note: This reviewer-writer-editor’s assessments is based on his deep diving and power diving in the race-against-time, procedure-driven drama of A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE which is unnervingly plausible because it bring to mind so many things going on in the real world. WORD patrons should expect superb nerve wrecking suspense.
The way small technical details, acronyms, situation rooms, DEFCON levels, etcetera and so forth … and so on … are handled with panache, gives the movie an amazing verisimilitude that has been missing in the plethora of action movies being released nowadays.
The storytelling structure of revisiting roughly the same time window from divergent viewpoints allow the audience to see and in a sense experience how chaos can cascade through different parts of government and society.
Critics note that succinct personal human details help add to the affects make audiences feel that they might actually seeing and feeling renditions of real life. These moments, for the pleasure and benefits of audiences, make the threat more than abstract.
The threat?
One more time: An impending nuclear missile attack targeting Chicago forces the White House to confront the reality of nuclear warfare under immense time pressure. The film focuses on the tense, high-stakes decisions made by the President and his team as they race to determine a response. This reviewer-writer-editor, born and raised in the Windy City, was hung up not long ago Trump was threatening to invade Chicago.
Slam-Dunk Casting: Rebecca Ferguson, Jared Harris, Idris Elba, Tracy Letts, and other cast members deliver strong performances.
Bigelow’s direction, Barry Ackroyd’s cinematography, and the sharp, sometimes fragmented editing have been highly noted. The visual and auditory design enhances the sense of impending catastrophic disaster.
Several reviews emphasize the timeliness of the film – Think Trump? Think Putin? Nuclear threat may feel less discussed publicly than during Cold War eras, but the potential is very much present. The movie can force an audience to confront that. There are critics distressed that the film is not just entertainment but crosses line as a intrusive warning.
Nevertheless, the Gripes
Some critics – who reportedly screened the film – argue that once the film cycles back through the same time period from different perspectives, the tension fades.
There were, are critics who complained of too much ambiguity. No standout villains nor a single standout hero, were some of the other complaints. Well, the WORD, yet, to see the movie. is already experiencing Pavlovian moments just thinking about the film.
A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE is described as unrelenting and stressful but some pundits imply there are moments of uneven pacing. Some others say the film raises big questions but doesn’t always offer satisfying answers about responsibility, policy, or what should be done. It’s more exploratory or cautionary than prescriptive.
Like the director’s Olympian Oscars, ZERO DARK THIRTY (5*****stars)) and THE HURT LOCKER (5*****stars), this film emphasizes realistic institutional structures that people in government, military and intelligence really do under pressure. Bigelow has long shown what people do or can do, how individuals acclimate to violence and crisis, how decisions are made when stakes are catastrophic and appear hopeless.
Bigelow has been hailed as one of the preeminent stylists of contemporary Hollywood filmmaking, putting, her distinctive stamp on standard genres like the Western-tinged vampire flick, NEAR DARK (1987) and the feminist-themed cop thriller BLUE STEEL (1990). Besides success with POINT BLANK, Bigelow enjoyed newfound status as a mainstream director with a rather artistic bent. Following a brief marriage and creative collaboration with fellow director James Cameron, she directed the futuristic STRANGE DAYS (1995).
And so it goes.
the WORD Editor Gregg W. Morris