PREMISE
When a single, unattributed missile is launched at the United States, a race begins to determine who is responsible and how to respond.
THE GOOD STUFF
IDRIS ELBA- He pops up at the tail end of this movie and has one of the better supporting performances of the year. At first, I didn’t think so because he’s playing the POTUS, and at first, he seemed to be too cool and swagged out to be the POTUS. (I mean, he is Idris Elba after all)
But the key to this performance is watching it devolve into a man who is quickly and assuredly unraveling, given the impossibility of his situation. This comes in layers, and Elba plays each one expertly. This man goes from completely swagged out, authoritative President Elba, to a man struggling to keep his thoughts together while being on the verge of a full-blown heart attack. And for good reason.
THE 1st CHAPTER- This is a story told in three chapters, and the first chapter sets the tone. Katherine Bigelow is no stranger to extremely high-tension thriller stuff, and this is no exception. This sequence of events is as tense and stressful as anything she’s ever put to screen. It’s like the first chapter of this film is a short film unto itself that would win awards for its expert pacing, wonderful performances, and clever use of its score.
The first chapter includes what may be the most tense Zoom call in the history of life. Bathroom breaks are not an option during the first chapter of this movie.
THE BAD STUFF
THE CHARACTER ACTOR BUFFET- I’m not necessarily a big fan of the “ensemble film.” I do think that when a collection of names gets a moment or two on some cameo-type stuff, then it’s fine. But when they are in the cast playing characters that should matter to the overall vibe of the story, it can get pretty distracting, honestly.
A house of dynamite is not simply an ensemble film. It’s not even an All-Star cast. The cast of this film is essentially the Met Gala of dope ass character actors. Anthony Ramos, Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Jason Clarke, Greta Lee, Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, Kaitlyn Dever, Tracy Letts, and a couple of more people who had prominent roles on really big things show up in the chapters that they are allotted. A couple of them have prominent roles, but most just have a super-brief section in this 1-hour 55-minute film, and then they disappear. It’s a lot, and it’s kind of unnecessary…but that could just be me.
THE UGLY STUFF
This movie makes two critical mistakes that cannot be forgiven.
Colossal mistake #1 — taking the amazing sequence that was the first chapter of this film and bastardizing it by telling the same sequence of events through many different characters via a Zoom call. I see what the film was trying to do here, but there isn’t much setup to the story between chapters, and what ends up happening is a Diet Coke Rashomon-type story where we’re telling the same sequence of events from different perspectives.Â
The beats in the first chapter of this story, which make it wildly intense and stressful, have significantly less impact when they are revisited from a different perspective. This film relives those same beats twice more, and by the third time we see it, it’s significantly less impactful than when we first saw it.
COLOSSAL MISTAKE #2- I’m very prone to hyperbole. Anyone who knows me will tell you that, although my hyperbole often takes the form of jokes, even when I’m ranting about something, I can tend to go overboard with my emotions. I admit that with no hesitation.
But trust me when I say that this is THE MOST A N T I C L I M A C T I C MOVIE I HAVE EVER SEEN!
This cannot be stressed enough. I’m talking about the history of movies. Find me something more anticlimactic than this. Yes, it does make a point in its ending, but what it’s building up to gets handled in such a monstrously anticlimactic way.
I’m struggling to find a comparison for this to anything in my filmgoing history. This should be the movie people automatically name-drop when they start talking about anticlimactic things in life. Not just movies. LIFE!
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I don’t know if this was cruising into my top 10 or anything like that… but I’ll say, as a thriller… this is high class in comparison to a lot of stuff that’s been released in 2025. I believe that the point of this whole story was to go into depth about how much power the position of the Presidency has, about how flawed our defense system is, even though they have all the tax dollars in the world to play with, and ultimately how scary it can be when there is one flaw in the system that can protect millions of lives.
A house of dynamite isn’t a standard political thriller; it is a flat-out disaster movie with nothing to do with the weather. I believe it intends to be the scariest movie of 2025, considering the administration currently running the country, and in that… it works. One could not help to think what the world would be like if this administration were put into this position.
That being said, it’s all ruined in the last 5 minutes. Literally all of it. And it’s a real shame. This is beautifully done in every single facet of filmmaking, but it’s impossible to recommend.
A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE is to be released on Netflix on OCTOBER 24, 2025
