A House of Dynamite

Kathryn Bigelow gives us what she is known for with this film. It's documentary-like, has unusual camera angles, and it is centered around violence.

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This movie got mixed reviews in my household. My partner liked it and enjoyed how each telling of the story focused on one perspective, showing us a tiny bit more detail with each telling.

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But I feel it's a piece of lazy film-making. The director shot a 20-minute piece with a large number of cameras and then spliced the footage into three bits.

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The premise is that a nuclear missile is shot at America and we watch American military and intelligence agencies scramble to deal with it. By the film’s end we have no context for what happened and we have no conclusion.

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All that happens throughout the movie is that we see a bunch of mid- to senior-level people doing their best while the person at the very top has a crisis. As much as I love Idris Elba, I didn’t feel he was the right choice for the American President. Sure, he’s a big man, but he just doesn’t have the energetic gravitas for these kinds of serious roles.

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I wouldn’t recommend this one unless getting a sneak peek into American military operations is of interest to you.

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