In June, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, published a self-penned essay in the magazine on what he termed “nuclear roulette”: “as a species, we are not particularly skilled at making time-pressured, closely reasoned decisions about matters of life and death,” he wrote. Kathryn Bigelow’s riveting new thriller underlines the truth of his assertion. The premise here is simple. A rogue nuclear weapon is fast heading toward Chicago. In a state of mounting panic and disbelief, US military and political leaders are desperately trying to stop it – and to come up with an appropriate response to whomever launched it. If they call it wrong, annihilation beckons.
A House of Dynamite stands as a grim and timely warning about the renewed dangers of nuclear proliferation. Another way of looking at it, though, is as the most entertaining Hollywood movie on the subject of potential mass destruction since Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove. Unlike Kubrick, Bigelow doesn’t offer much humour – satirical or otherwise – but this is a white knuckle ride of a movie in which the tension is ratcheted up to near breaking point early on, and then simply keeps on rising. German composer Volker Bertelmann’s ominous score, heavy on the strident strings, puts viewers on edge even more.
