This type of story is right up my alley.  I’ve always been fascinated by doomsday scenarios and the films they have spawned: Fail Safe, Dr. Strangelove , . ., Crimson Tide, By Dawn’s Early Light, Miracle Mile, Defcon-4, The Day After, etc.  I’m not sure what that says about me, but there it is.  So A House of Dynamite should be a slam dunk to qualify as a favorite of mine . . . only it isn’t.

Kathryn Bigelow’s film establishes a normal routine for several disparate governmental workers and civilians, all of which are suddenly challenged when a missile of unknown origin is launched toward the central United States from somewhere in the Pacific.  Procedures are followed; characters do their duties to the best of their abilities, and still the thing comes.  The clock winds down to impact — and then the story begins again, focusing on different characters.  The clock winds down again — and we start all over again, this time focusing on the U. S. president (Idris Elba) and his confusion and dismay.  And the clock winds down again . . .

The format of this movie is exceedingly maddening.  I will grant that there is some value in revisiting the events as they unfold from more varied perspectives, and seeing how different characters react to the unfolding drama.  By the third time through, I was not minding so much.  The nightmare scenario is played out as realistically as can be imagined and the cast is up to the task in every scene.  Yet this remains one frustrating watch.

The reason for that is the story’s perspective that once things are put in motion, there is little that one can do about it.  Couple that feeling with the abject failures of the technology designed to prevent such an event and the human complications of not being in the right places and having trouble communicating with one another and you have tragedy barreling toward you at ten thousand miles an hour.  That’s the power of the story.  What diminishes the film is a simplistic handling of the anticipated response, the deliberate lack of a villain (who shot the missile and why) and the redundant storytelling, with the result being a taut, harrowing, modern cautionary tale that has no real payoff, one way or the other.  Sometimes that works (in 1999’s Limbo, for example) but here it is a real letdown.  ☆ ☆ 1/2.  30 November 2025.