Kathryn Bigelow

A House of Dynamite

12/10/25

Filmhouse, Edinburgh

It’s been quite some time since we saw anything from Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow, but A House of Dynamite signals an auspicious return to the fray. This Netflix-financed epic will be streaming soon, but meanwhile it’s been granted a limited theatrical release. It’s big, glossy and features a host of well-known actors in relatively small roles, in a whole series of convincingly-recreated sets. It’s also one of the most utterly terrifying films I’ve ever seen.

At Fort Greely, Alaska, Major Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos) and his team detect the unannounced launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile, heading towards the United States. Moments later at the White House Situation Room in Washington DC, Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) sees the incoming projectile on a giant screen and watches appalled as the terrifying statistics unreel. The missile’s current trajectory has it aimed squarely at the city of Chicago and – if unimpeded – in just eighteen minutes’ time, millions are going to die.

An attempt can be made to intercept the missile in the air but, as one observer comments, it will be “like trying to hit a bullet with a bullet.” And, should that fail, the only thing to be determined is the severity of the response. With no country claiming responsibility for the launch – indeed both Russia and North Korea are denying it – the decision must lie entirely with the POTUS (Idris Elba), who is in the middle of making a speech to a high school basketball team somewhere in the city.

And that eighteen minutes is ticking away…

Anyone expecting an exciting drama where a lantern-jawed hero runs athletically into view with a perfectly-timed maverick plan to save the world is going to be severely disappointed with A House of Dynamite. This is simply not that film. Instead, it’s the kind of story you watch with clammy palms as the threat steadily rises: the kind where you begin to realise that there really isn’t going to be any way of evading the devastating conclusion. There will be not scenes of relieved people hugging each other and fist-pumping beneath the Stars and Stripes as they realise the threat has been miraculously defused.

Instead we have human beings staring into the abyss as they see their hopes and dreams turning to smoke. And the realisation that this is the world we now live in, where one mistake can have cataclysmic consequences. Writer Noah Oppenheim opts to show the same eighteen minutes of the missile’s trajectory from three different perspectives. It’s only in the final third that we actually get to see the POTUS, as it dawns on him that he is going to have to select his country’s response to the situation from a handy booklet presented to him by an aide – a sort of IKEA manual for disaster – and that the repercussions of that decision will live with him forever. (Despite his helplessness, I find myself wistfully wishing that Idris Elba actually were the President of the US instead of the man who currently has his hands on the nuclear codes…)

This is a tough watch. I honestly cannot remember being so profoundly affected by a film since I first saw Peter Watkins’ film, The War Game, back in 1966. While I cannot in all honesty claim to have enjoyed watching A House of Dynamite, I believe it’s an important and brilliantly-directed film, with a powerful and important message at its core. I would urge everyone to see it and have a long, hard think about the awful truth it clarifies: that we as a species have built the unstable dwelling of the title – and that we are forever doomed to live with that knowledge unless we do something to change it.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

Detroit

30/08/17

Kathryn Bigelow’s angry howl of a movie deals with the infamous Algiers Motel Incident of 1967, one of the most shameful abuses of civil rights in America’s history. It’s certainly not an easy film to watch, but it’s undeniably powerful and recreates the events with an almost forensic eye for period detail.

Melvin Dismukes (John Boyega) is the luckless security guard who finds himself drawn into events at the motel after one of the residents plays a practical joke with a starting pistol, a joke that goes horribly wrong. A bunch of Detroit police officers, led by the openly racist Krauss (Will Poulter), enter the motel with guns drawn, determined to find the ‘sniper’ they believe is holed up there. Dismukes has the unenviable task of trying to maintain some kind of equilibrium amidst the rising tension, while Krauss, already in trouble for shooting an unarmed man in an earlier incident, is determined to make an arrest. The problem is, he isn’t particularly choosy about how he selects the so-called perpetrator.

The film quickly develops into a tense confrontation between the police and their captives, who are subjected to a terrifying ordeal that some of them, sadly, do not survive. The film then goes beyond the incident itself to examine the resulting trial and its woeful  verdict. Brit actor John Boyega plays Dismukes with dignity and steely determination and there’s a fine turn from Algee Smith, as a vocalist on the edge of stardom, whose life is suddenly and irrevocably affected by the events at the motel. But it’s Poulter who is the revelation here, playing a ruthless, smirking scumbag, a role that’s about a million miles away from his usual comfort zone. Clearly, Bigelow spotted something in that angelic face that was capable of portraying evil – and it’s interesting to note that the actor was attached to the role of Pennywise in the upcoming It before a change of director prompted him to bail out.

Detroit won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s long and harrowing and some liberties have been taken with the real story (the police officers’ names, for instance, have been changed, presumably in an attempt to protect the film-makers from lawsuits), but it’s nonetheless an important and profoundly affecting film that absolutely deserves to be seen and heard . I would strongly suggest that you grab the opportunity to do exactly that.

4.6 stars

Philip Caveney