Oscarologists are already alive to the statuette possibilities for Kathryn Bigelow’s rattling new nuclear potboiler, her first film for eight years, which has screened in competition at Venice International Film Festival.
With its fast-paced walking, talking and shouting into telephones, A House of Dynamite is a nervy, timely thriller that goes down like Coca-Cola while another US brand – its military – takes centre stage.
The script, written with scholarly aplomb by the former NBC News president Noah Oppenheim, imagines the unthinkable: what if a rogue nuclear missile were hurtling toward a city such as Chicago, with just 19 minutes until impact? Military jargon, from “GBIs” to “launch azimuth”, is painstakingly demystified, adding to stakes that feel agonisingly real.
With a nod to Roshomon, this scenario is played out from various perspectives, from the White House situation room to command bunkers.
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Military and political leaders scramble to respond when interceptors fail to stop a ballistic missile aimed at Chicago. A sleek US president, played by Idris Elba, goes from grandstanding at a PR stunt with young basketballers to a deer caught in the headlights. A young retaliatory-strategy adviser (Jonah Hauer-King) offers the panicked Potus laminated menu cards detailing strikeback options.
The looping structure can be repetitive, and the brief cutaways in personal lives – sick children, a marriage proposal, a daughter at ground zero – are perfunctory. The script also leans heavily on accomplished players making the best of nuclear-thriller stock characters, including the hawkish general (Tracy Letts), the cautious secretary of defence (Jared Harris) and the ingenue reporter (Willa Fitzgerald).
But there’s no arguing with Bigelow’s mastery of the form. The white-knuckle countdown, propelled by Volker Bertelmann’s taut, percussive score and Barry Ackroyd’s fleet-footed camerawork, maintains urgency even though most of the film concerns civil servants and politicians talking in rooms.
Tightly coiled performances, notably Gabriel Basso’s deputy national-security adviser and Rebecca Ferguson’s military comms officer, add to the frantic pace.
Don’t expect Dr Strangelove: A House of Dynamite remains deadly serious as it exposes a global unpreparedness for nuclear Armageddon. It may not detonate fresh structural ideas, but it delivers a carefully calibrated explosion of geopolitical anxiety.
In cinemas from October 3rd and streaming on Netflix from October 24th
