Venice 2025: A House of Dynamite, rather strong thriller of Kathryn Bigelow
Point Break and Zero Dark Thirty director makes her comeback with this sophisticated suspense imagining the United States under the imminent threat of a nuclear bomb.
This is the second time this year, after Mission : Impossible – The Final Reckoningthat we think in front of an American film at Limit point (Fail Safe), from Sidney Lumet, classic of sixties geopolitical suspense, with Henry founded in President of the United States trying to prevent a global nuclear war-a kind of serious version of Doctor FOLAMOUR. You have to make a reason: international tensions are intensifying, the defense budgets increase, the risks of conflicts are in all heads, then the US cinema returns to its scenarios of the time of the Cold War.
In A House of DynamiteKathryn Bigelow pleads for de -escalation. And shows the fragility of American superpower. Written by Noah Oppenheim (former journalist, screenwriter Jackiein the name surprisingly close to Oppenheimer, which puts in the mood), the film describes the reactions of a handful of specialists in American defense, soldiers and politicians, when they learn that a nuclear missile of unknown origin is in the process of riding at full speed towards Chicago, threatening to kill ten million individuals. They have 18 minutes to act – it’s the time estimated before the impact. The intrigue is structured at the Rashomonreplaying the same events three times from different points of view, fragmenting this suspended moment in which the stupor and the need for decision -making mingle. Three segments which make it possible to intensify the suspense and to perceive differently the issues according to the strategic level, hence they are observed-all according to a pyramidal logic, from a center of control of the anti-missile defense to the summit of the State, with its president of the United States played by Idris Elba.
Kathryn Bigelow tracks here – classic theme at home – the moment when the illusion of power cracks, when the supposedly infallible institution cracks under pressure. We think back to the tears of Jessica Chastain at the end of Zero Dark Thirty Faced with these portraits of men and women who suddenly see the ground shirk under their feet and are overwhelmed by emotion, when we expected a concrete professionalism. They spent their lives preparing, saying to themselves that the end of the world was for tomorrow, and suddenly, that’s it: tomorrow has arrived. Bigelow and Oppenheim also intend to show the rather disorderly way (and to say all frankly disturbing) with which the first world power would respond to an attack of this type if it took place, painting the USA as a colossus with clay feet.
One wonders during A House of Dynamite If the adventures of the intrigue (the telephone of the Russian Foreign Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the video of Reunion on Zoom which plants at the crucial moment …) are the fruit of real documentary research, or just dramatic strings allowing Bigelow to give weight to its political remarks, to make us contemplate the abyss at the edge of which the world dances because of nuclear proliferation. But the film is excited with enough know-how and energy so that these questions are asked only after the end credits.
The style is that of this cinema-truth boosted with adrenaline characteristic of the filmmaker, soaked here in an aesthetic of neo-thriller Zero Daythe Netflix series with DE NIRO as president of an America in a giant cyber-attack (and precisely co-created by Noah Oppenheim). A little “TV”, therefore, but clearly thought as such, as something catchy and easy to look at, by a filmmaker who intends to speak to as many people as possible. We may regret not find the fever of his best films here, or even the abrasive side and almost ill from the latest, Detroit. More Detroit was a commercial failure, sentenced him to an eight -year silence. The excellent welcome of A House of Dynamite In Venice (which presages a campaign for the next Oscars), his foreseeable success on Netflix and the debates that he will not fail to arouse (we are waiting for Trump’s criticism on Truth Social), will clearly put it back in the saddle. Kathryn Bigelow had lost a battle, not war.
A House of Dynamitefrom Kathryn Bigelow, with Rebecca Ferguson, Idris Elba, Jared Harris… on Netflix on October 24.
