A House Of Dynamite (2025) Dir: Kathryn Bigelow

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It seemed like it was only a matter of time before Kathryn Bigelow would direct another American war film, so when this Netflix original thriller dropped on Netflix it did not surprise me one bit. She is certainly no stranger to them, having famously directed the Oscar-winning 'Zero Dark Thirty' and 'The Hurt Locker'. I have very mixed feelings about military films, including the two Bigelow films I just mentioned, so I was prepared to feel divided once again with this one.

Anyone who heard this film's soundtrack and thought it was stolen from 'Conclave' would not be far from the truth. Both films have the same composer; Volker Bertelmann, who evidently used a lot of his score from 'Conclave' to form that of 'A House Of Dynamite'. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - I loved the 'Conclave' soundtrack - I just wish the film had a more unique sound to it, instead of seemingly essentially utilising pre-existing music.

The first act of the film was absolutely breathtaking. I had very few notes. It was so intense and suspenseful, and its breakneck, unpredictable nature made for terrific cinema. The problem was that seeing this same scenario play out twice more, and in a less compelling and less suspenseful way was just not as interesting. The film killed its own momentum with increasing severity with every rehashed or repeated scene, which was so frustrating. The film also had an incredibly frustrating and anticlimactic ending, which renders virtually the whole film pointless, because absolutely nothing got resolved, and no outcome could be had for the audience. It made an already frustrating film feel like a waste of time.

I also need to talk about how frustrating it was to watch yet another American war film that insisted that the United States were the definitive and altruistic 'good guys' - this one even went so far as to describe a number of other nations as 'adversaries' and 'bad guys'. It was so jarring and disappointing, and spoke to a wider lack of self-awareness that is so often lobbied at the US from people outside of the country. This was yet another film that seemed unable to grasp this notion.

The film was so high on its own inflated sense of importance, from its characters to its locations, and seeks to deliver one, irritating and typically American point of view; America is good and everyone else is bad, or at least, not as good as us. It's so ironic, especially considering America's global military outreach and impact. The film felt more like fear mongering anti-foreign propaganda than a serious, true-to-life thriller, despite that aforementioned very strong beginning.

The ensemble cast did, on the whole, a good job, but none more than Rebecca Ferguson who outclassed everyone with ease, despite her limited screentime. I thought Gabriel Basso and Idris Elba did fairly well, each had some good moments, although the dialogue for Elba's character was woeful. A few others deserved at least a mention, because they really made this film more watchable; Jared Harris, Tracy Letts, Anthony Ramos, Moses Ingram, Jonah Hauer-King, Greta Lee, and Jason Clarke.

Overall, I found this to be an incredibly irritating film to watch, because the first part of it was genuinely superb, but was followed by an absolute slog of unsatisfying, repetitive, and self-aggrandizing storytelling, all topped off by one of the worst cut-to-black endings I've seen in a long time. I was left baffled by how poor the second and third parts of the film were, despite the respectable efforts of a very talented cast of actors. A film like this coming out in 2025 is just surreal, and so poorly construed and executed.