It is still a little early to make a concluding speech on the past year, however, we can already thank the streaming platforms for causing us a lot of emotion throughout. We will have suffered from the first light of 2025 with The Gardener ; we will have dozed off quite nicely with a good part of the rest, having not forgotten the vast majority since; and we approach the end with a little favorite named A House of Dynamite.
A project that we have been following for a while since it is the new baby of Kathryn BigelowOscar-winning and distinguished director to whom we owe Point Break, Minesweepers, Zero Dark Thirty…And who had disappeared from the radar screens since the unfair failure of his Detroit in 2017. As is often the case in the industry, it is therefore on Netflix that the filmmaker bounces back. And what a rebound!
Le synopsis d’A House of Dynamite
Since the end of the Cold War,a nuclear threat seems to be confined to its hypothetical nature. But what would happen if, one morning, a bomb was dropped on an American city? During eighteen minutesthe entire state and military apparatus will find itself disrupted. Eighteen minutes in the eyes of those who suddenly have to make crucial decisions that they never thought they would make.
A masterfully executed thriller
Supported by the screenplay by Noah Oppenheim and the Editing by Kirk BaxterKatheryn Bigelow knows how to set us up a high tension situation in a matter of minutes. A situation which will be repeated three times, following a different path as if to paint the overall portrait of an institution ready to implode from the inside in the face of external danger.
The hand-held camera staging will endeavor to give credibility to the whole for a quasi-documentary approach to the exercise. The settings, the acronyms, the film aims to be as real as possible without taking us by the hand, without losing us either. He locks up his characters by turning a place they control against them, as if they were now prisoners of their uncertainties. Offices, bunkers or means of transport, everything that brought comfort suddenly becomes the cause of unbearable claustrophobia.
And to embody its outdated figures, A House of Dynamite can count on an XXL casting with sizes such as Rebecca Ferguson, Idris Elba, Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, Tracy Leets, Jason Clark, Greta Lee… The beautiful people accumulate in each scene and so many personalities whose surface we will scratch to remove all control. When too many people think they have the solution, that may be where the problem arises.
The film will constantly feed parts back into the machine, creating a certain redundancy, to better curb it. We have the impression of witnessing a thriller worthy of the great spy works where suddenly, a villain will be found and a hero will come to save the world. Print only.
The prerogative of a great film
What makes Bigelow’s cinema so captivating, and this film in particular, is the director’s way of starting from a specific situation to draw up a cynical portrait of the American apparatus, without pointing the finger at an administration. Where it would ultimately have been easy to hit on the apparent fragility of Trumpist governance, the story ofA House of Dynamite prefers to touch on universality. The important thing is not to denounce who is in power, but the impotence of this same power facing a nuclear threat.
Bigelow intends to shake up our false sense of security and bring us back to our condition as human beings. It doesn’t matter about electronics, satellites, weaponry or our place in the chain of command… it’s all just a costume we put on to get the illusion of control. Everything is false, including a showman president trained for emergencies, but not ready for them. And when reality becomes inevitable, the gaze moves away from the cold screen to embrace the warmth of a loved one.
Just because she’s spreading her wings on Netflix doesn’t meanwe had to count on the director to accommodate imposed specifications. No, here the SVoD service is only a broadcasting tool. Kathryn Bigelow has granted herself the right to run her boat as she sees fit, even if it means shaking up the habits of a public unprepared for what will follow.
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And this gives us this famous conclusion which refuses the moralizing message as much as satisfying the spectator. It is brutal, frustrating, unique. The objective is not to provide answers, it is to dissect a situation with almost documentary realism. A House of Dynamite does not prepare us for what awaits us, it coldly depicts how it will happen. Far from an entertaining blockbuster, the feature film has put the nuclear threat back at the center of our fears. We don’t know whether to applaud or tremble.
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