Contrary to what the audience might assume from the tense trailer of A House of Dynamite, the dynamite crackles but never goes off. That is a criminal offence — an anti-climactic dud that Alfred Hitchcock warned filmmakers to stay away from.

Hitchcock, the father of suspense, explains the necessity of resolving the ticking clock element in storytelling (one can see the clip on the American Film Institute’s YouTube channel). He wisely explains that the bomb with the timer should blow up or be diffused, but its conclusion should never be left up in the air, because the audience needs that emotional relief.

That relief never comes in A House of Dynamite; in fact, the screenplay by Noah Oppenheim (a former president of NBC News and co-writer of Zero Day) revisits the ramp-up several times, with each iteration providing diminishing returns. A House of Dynamite is directed by Kathryn Bigelow, whose last good film was The Hurt Locker (2008).

Stuck in the shoulder-mounted, faux tension-inducing camerawork style that had been ‘cool’ in the 2000s (the cinematographer is Barry Ackroyd, the man who also did the ‘shaky cam’ work in Green Zone and Jason Bourne), Bigelow mounts the tension with surprising effectiveness in ‘Inclination Is Flattening’, the first of three chapters that retells the same 40 minutes of this nearly two-hour film.

Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite is devoid of any spark after the first third of the film

An unidentified intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is picked up by the White House Situation Room — the lead actors are Rebecca Ferguson and Jason Clarke — and actions are taken to shoot the missile down before it devastates Chicago.

Questions about the origins are asked, but no clear answer is deduced. Is it China, North Korea or Russia, and why are countries such as Pakistan, suddenly aware of the USA’s plight, readying their own defences? More importantly, why isn’t an aggressor already identified and blamed? Can the United States even brave an attack without a retaliation as soon as Chicago is hit?

With such piercing geopolitical questions about diplomatic relations and war pressuring the US government’s engagement protocols, amplifying the film’s tense, ticking-clock narrative, one wonders where Oppenheim and Bigelow will take the story.

The answers: nowhere — and fast.

The remaining chapters, ‘Hitting a Bullet With a Bullet’ and ‘A House Filled With Dynamite’, revisit the same events from the different perspectives of Jake Baering (Gabriel Basso), Ried Baker (Jared Harris), and the president, played by an overwrought Idris Elba (who plays his character as if he’s constantly on the verge of a heart attack).

The situations and dialogues remain the same and no new information is shared in the chapters. Just a tense statement about America’s close-mindedness — and its early warning defence system’s potential failings — is presented, and then re-presented, as if on a loop. The film has no climax or an action that leads to a worthwhile end.

One wonders what if, rather than repetitive chapters, the sequences had been intercut with their respective actors in a continued, linear order? Surely, with the scenes and dialogues being the same, there would be no loss of information! Of course, that would make this film seem like a TV show’s episode that happens in real-time (24, anyone?) — but then again, shows often lead to a conclusion, good or bad, and are never left up in the air like A House of Dynamite.

If you’re in the mood for something eerily similar, watch Fail Safe (1964, directed by Sidney Lumet, streaming on Sony’s official YouTube channel), or a season of 24 instead.

Streaming on Netflix, A House of Dynamite is rated suitable for ages 16 and over

Published in Dawn, ICON, November 9th, 2025