What better horror film for the Halloween season than a movie about nuclear Armageddon? Kathryn Bigelow’s apocalyptic political thriller, A House of Dynamite is a weighty procedural about America’s response to an ICBM launched from an unknown location by an unknown foe.
What is known is that the missile will impact on the continental United States in 19 minutes, the likely target Chicago.
Bigelow has her A-List ensemble cast assembled in various situation rooms of government agencies with endless acronyms, FEMA, NORTHCOM, PEOC, STRATCOM. They may be dealing with sick kids, marriage proposals, or messy break ups in their personal lives but when nuclear catastrophe first reveals itself as an innocuous, “sub orbital” red blip on a screen, they are mostly stoic, trusting in the multi-layered process they have endlessly trained for.
Luminaries like Rebecca Ferguson, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts and Jason Clarke command the rooms and screens with clipped jargon and steely resolve, and for a time we are reassured that there are still grown-ups at the heart of the United States Government that can navigate the end of times to a successful conclusion without us ever losing sleep.
The gullible liberals amongst us are further relieved that Bigelow has even employed the ultimate fail safe by casting Idris Elba as her POTUS.
Elba’s President is the very essence of Hollywood Obama, handsome, rugged, charming when visiting high school kids at a basketball event and even asks his First Lady for advice. The intravenous drip of those Halcyon days mainline hope despite the Republican elephant in the real Situation Room.
And therein lies the real terror at the heart of A House of Dynamite.
The smartest guys in those rooms slowly, inexorably, begin to come apart at the seams. 60 years on from Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, they still haven’t grasped the fact that the many billions of dollars spent on trying to win a nuclear war is the very definition of insanity.
When the Secretary of Defence learns that the ground-based interceptor missiles have only a 61% chance of destroying the rogue ICBM he exclaims, “So it’s a fucking coin toss? This is what we get for fifty billion dollars?”
Protocols start to fail, essential calls can’t be merged, personal phone calls are made, colleagues are resented for being priority evacuees to the Raven Rock Mountain Complex. When Jake Baerington the Deputy National Security Advisor speaks with the Russian Foreign Minister, you feel we would be in safer hands when the advisors discuss the de-escalation strategy free from the shackles of political leadership.
When a handful of mere mortals are given the power of gods over every living being on earth, we are already on borrowed time. Every Starship Enterprise sentence drags us closer to annihilation. When the interceptors miss their target, a Lieutenant understates that horrendous fact, “Negative impact. The object remains inbound.”
And thus, with every misfire and mishap the decision to retaliate is laid like the Sword of Damocles at the clay feet of the POTUS, Pyrrhic victory at best, the annihilation of humanity at worst.
If Idris Elba as Barack Obama physically dismantles at the absurdity of such a choice, what chance do we have with Donald Trump, a man famously shut out of owning a NFL franchise, in such proximity to the nuclear football?
A man beyond satire who has ordered the Pentagon to increase nuclear testing to match Russia and China whilst peddling Trump 2028 gold sneakers to his MAGA cult.
Bigelow’s key decision to make her President a progressive throwback to a bygone age on the surface looks like Democratic wish fulfilment; but our current reality makes that choice – and A House of Dynamite – all the more terrifying.