Bigelow's 'A House of Dynamite' Lights a Fuse That Doesn't Quite Ignite

In Kathryn Bigelow’s “A House of Dynamite,” when a mysterious missile launches from the Pacific and begins bearing down on the Midwest, the biggest threat initially at the White House is a pile of paper work.

The ho-hum response that kicks off Bigelow’s firecracker of a film is quickly shattered. But that transition from routine to imminent danger, replayed three times over in this “Rashomon” meets “Dr. Strangelove,” is the defining register of Bigelow’s urgent, if heavy-handed nuclear wake-up call.

Words across the screen open the film, noting that global powers once worked to decrease nuclear weapons. “That era is now over,” declares the movie.

You might be thinking: As if we didn’t have enough to worry about. But no matter how many other existential concerns might be making a restful night of sleep a thing of pure fantasy, filmmakers have long been particularly attuned to the threat of nuclear warfare. “A House of Dynamite” joins a cinematic lineage going back to “Dr. Strangelove” and “Fail Safe” in 1964. And it comes amid a modern revival of big-screen nuclear anxiety including 2023’s “Oppenheimer” and preceding James Cameron’s announced plans to make “Ghosts of Hiroshima.”

But Bigelow, working from a script by the former NBC News president Noah Oppenheim, takes her own bracingly contemporary, precisely granular approach to envisioning the very sudden emergence of a nuclear weapon heading toward the U.S. mainland. With riveting efficiency, Bigelow constructs a taut, real-time thriller that opens explosively but dissipates with each progressive iteration.

The first section of the film, which opens in theaters Friday before streaming Oct. 24 on Netflix, is its most powerful. It begins with a routine, workaday morning. Soon after Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) arrives at a command center at the White House, a military base in Alaska reports the unexpected launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Its launch was unsighted, making the origin and nature of the attack unclear. Everyone’s first reaction is that it will likely splashdown somewhere in the Sea of Japan.

But in the moments that follow, a new realization dawns: the missile is headed for Chicago. In 18 minutes, millions of Americans may die. The DEFCON level worsens. Long-used playbooks get dusted off. Communication, and protocol, are fast and immediate — military leaders appear on a video call where the president is a quiet black screen — but the solutions not nearly as many of us might assume.

Ferguson, a deft, intelligent actor, commands the operation with quicksilver savvy and humanity. As the minutes tick away, the urge grows to get her phone out of a lock box — a bit of daily White House protocol — and call her family. As impact nears, as you might expect, the intensity swells.

But just before that moment arrives, “A House of Dynamite” turns the clock back to launch. The next two sections of the film replay the same moments, but from different points of view. The second chapter leans largely on National Security Advisor Jake Baerington (Gabriel Basso), and the fast-moving attempts to pinpoint the possible strategy of the missile launch and who might have fired it. Could it be North Korea? Russia? Is this an accidental event or, by the rules of engagement, does it set off a chain reaction leading irrevocably to mutual destruction?

The third section takes the frantic debate to the more solitary figure of the president (Idris Elba, who has managed to play both the British Prime Minister and POTUS in one calendar year). By this point, though, “A House of Dynamite” has begun to spin its wheels, retreading ground it already covered, and leaving Elba searching for direction in his scenes.

The rewind-and-replay narrative offers some benefits. By three times returning to the beginning of a new day, each time met by all with its familiar habits — the need for coffee, traffic in the commute, maybe a quick round of golf — “A House of Dynamite” each time reinforces how rapidly our sense of normalcy might be forever shattered.

But the structure also dampens the fuse initially lit by “A House of Dynamite.” What carries it through, above all, is the great command of Bigelow (“Zero Dark Thirty,” “Detroit” ), who knows perhaps better than any working filmmaker how to turn bracing real-life, or near-real-life crises into heart-pounding thrillers. Aiding that cause is a fine ensemble of actors (Tracy Letts, Jared Harris, Greta Lee, Anthony Ramos, Jason Clarke) with the gravitas to enhance Bigelow’s verisimilitude. But the higher up the chain of command “A House of Dynamite” goes, the more it loses its grip on plausibility.

“A House of Dynamite,” a Netflix release is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for language. Running time: 112 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.