A House of Dynamite Review

Director Kathryn Bigelow gathered quite the impressive cast for her latest film, the Netflix original "A House of Dynamite;" everyone from Idris Elba to Rebecca Ferguson to Anthony Ramos is here, a tale of what happens inside the United States government when a nuclear strike is made on US soil. We don't see the reason for the attack, the explosion or the fallout, just the immediate events to personnel leading up to the discovery, attempted de-escalation and reality of a potentially nuclear war.

Strangely structured into a handful of chapters, we first meet Olivia Walker (Ferguson) as she goes through security and sits down at her desk, ready for another day as senior officer in the US Situation Room. Thousands of miles away sits Dan Gonzalez (Ramos), commander of the military base that quickly spots what everyone thinks is another routine test from another country. Yeah sure, like we'd have a whole movie if it was just that. 

Back in DC, director (Jason Clarke) tells Olivia that he's got some reports to fill out and to only get him if the world falls apart. Those reports are definitely not getting filled out today. Of course a video conference is called, with as the Secretary of Defense (Jared Harris), the Deputy National Security Advisor (Gabriel Basso), the Combatant Commander (Tracy Letts), among others, to prep a briefing for the president (Idris Elba, possibly the only celebrity I'd vote for). But it's quickly determined that this is no missile test, but instead an actual nuclear invasion, country of origin and reasoning still unknown. It's predicted to hit Chicago in approximately sixteen minutes and cost something like ten million lives.

As the ensemble cast scrambles to try and place the "who and why" behind the strike, "A House of Dynamite" name-drops a laundry list of ye olde cliches, chiefly North Korea, China, Iran and Russia, and legitimate or not, it's hard to muster any level of cinematic attachment when the potential villains sound like a decade old Tom Clancy novel, but I digress.

Gonzalez leads a team to intercept the missile, knocking it out of commission before it makes landfall, but with a sixty one percent chance of success, it's like, ahem, hitting a bullet with a bullet, or so the script says. With odds like that, reality sets in, but they don't panic as they would in a lesser movie: sure, Olivia tries frantically to reach her ill son and husband, telling him to get in the car and just drive, before hanging up the phone, but we're fortunately saved the hackneyed sights of nameless groups of people screaming frantically as they make a coordinated route to the exit signs. The minutes of impact keep ticking down until the interpose fails, and its up to the POTUS to make the call on retaliation.

We then time travels back to the same approximate start time and plays out more-or-less the same events, but from the perspective of the Secretary of Defense and his immediate coworkers and then of the president and his meticulously planned activities; it's a bold move that works because of the different personal stakes every group has, elevated by game players who know the power of a pause mid-sentence.

My favorite is Tracy Letts, who handles himself like that one cool teacher everyone had in school, more focused on his coffee and "the game last night" until he needs to actually take things seriously. I suppose it makes up for his character not exactly having much of a backstory.

"A House of Dynamite" doesn't offer an easy answer because there isn't one, but the audience will no doubt feel cheated at its abrupt and anti-climatic climax. And yes, in a way this is just two hours of people sitting, walking and running, looking worried on the phone, but the narrative thread weaving between secretaries, radar stations, the Situation Room and the president himself keeps you thinking. Imagine, a film that asks something of you, instead of just bombarding you with pretty, computer-generated spectacle. This is an unusual thriller in that all the action is hypothetical, and exhausting and stressful in a way your commercial, big-budget blockbuster could never be.

Vicious Review

While Renny Harlin is out bastardizing "The Strangers" franchise by remaking a sub-90 minute long film into a trilogy, its creator, Bryan Bertino, is out writing and directing other things. Unfortunately, his efforts resulted in Paramount+'s "Vicious."

Starring Dakota Fanning, who chainsmokes between screaming and crying, as Polly, a cronic underachiever on a snowy night, living in a house she rents from her far more successful sister Lainie (Rachel Blanchard), when she gets a knock on the door. She opens it to find a decrepit old woman, played by Kathryn Hunter, who says she thought she knew someone who used to live here. Polly lets her in, offering to call her a cab, when the lady pulls out a box and places it on the coffee table, gifting it to her. Polly is a bit perplexed, but that confusion soon turns to fright when the old lady starts saying "you're going to die tonight." Let this be a lesson to you kids to never talk to strangers.

Polly kicks out the old woman and the box, who proceeds to try and figure out what to wear the next day. It's "a big day" we're told, Polly apparently hoping to go back to school (I think, the film never bothers to fuss over small details like character development). But as she sits on her bed, we see a blurry figure shifting behind her. She yells "Polly," who shrieks only to turn around to an empty room. She calls her mom (Mary McCormack) in a panic, who seems to downplay the oddness of her daughter's evening in favor of chastising her cigarette habit. "You said you'd quit," she tells Polly over the phone. My mom would probably be more upset at all the expletives she says, but I digress. 

Now back in the living room but still on the phone, Polly is stunned to see the box is now on her coffee table, inside an hourglass not yet ticking down. But then plot happens, and it turns out her mom is not actually her mom but someone behind this whole thing with the old lady and the box. She says she'll die tonight unless she puts inside something she hates, something she needs and something she loves. Sounds simple enough (I'd wager the smokes would count for all three).

What follows is a confusing mess of scenes that don't really make any sense, from mirror-people, calls from dead people, neighbors who kill themselves and doors that won't open, among many others. But what can and can't happen is never explained, nor the reason why, and it is this lack of logic that isolates any of the action onscreen from resonating with us. 

Without any real purpose, "Vicious" fails as a horror movie, settling on cheap would-be jump scares, loud "bangs" and visions of things that aren't really happening; it's like a ghost movie without the ghost. Oh, and the ending, which I won't spoil, is so lame and so decidedly unscary that it's hard to imagine it coming from the same guy who crafted the depressing and distressing climax of 2008's "The Strangers." 

The film doesn't know what it's trying to say, what its own rules are or the point of any of this, settling instead on an appealing lead, Tristan Nyby's good cinematography, moody lighting and a bunch of cliches.