A House of Dynamite? More Like A House of Duds

Aside from my writing over on KinersKorner.com about baseball, I like to kick back here on my author site and tackle a little movie or TV review now and then. So, spoiler alert: if you haven’t seen A House of Dynamite yet, bookmark this, go watch it, then come back and yell at me in the comments.

Now that’s out of the way, I have to say how utterly, catastrophically, jaw-droppingly disappointed I am in this film. And let me tell you, my expectations were high. Kathryn Bigelow the Oscar-winning, trailblazing, first woman to snag Best Director for The Hurt Locker, and the filmmaker behind tense, unforgettable thrillers like Zero Dark Thirty, Point Break, and Near Dark at the helm? I was ready to be blown away. Early on, a couple of Francisco Lindor mentions had me nodding in approval, feeling like maybe, just maybe, we were in for a smart, tense ride. The style was intriguing: reliving the same events in real time from multiple viewpoints, a sort of cinematic Groundhog Day, but with nukes instead of weather reports.

And here’s where it all derailed. Instead of Phil Connors-level charm, wit, and cleverness guiding us through each repeat, the scenes just repeated. Over and over. You know how in Groundhog Day you root for Bill Murray’s character to figure something out? In House of Dynamite, I found myself rooting for someone, anyone, to do something interesting. But no, Major events are left unexplained, and plot points are glossed over so casually that you start checking your watch.

Every repeat of the scene just became a nagging, bureaucratic echo chamber. I kept waiting for someone to suddenly start channeling Phil Connors and start dancing with Sonny and Cher while the world ended, but no such luck. And here’s the kicker: WarGames was made back in 1983. Yes, the dial-up modem sounds are a little dated, but even with its antiquated technology, that movie still managed to get the point across far more effectively than House of Dynamite does in 2025. WarGames made us care about the kids, the computer, and the possible end of the world. House of Dynamite? Fancy control rooms, glowing screens, acronyms flying like confetti and yet the only thing going nuclear is my patience.

Then there’s the young analyst Jake Baerington (Gabriel Basso), the supposed “bright hope” of the crisis. He’s the Deputy NSA suddenly thrust into the role of principal advisor because, get this, the actual NSA was out getting a colonoscopy. And, honestly, the movie feels a lot like that appointment: awkward, tense in all the wrong ways, and over long before you get the punchline. I kid you not. I get it—this is a thriller, suspension of disbelief, yadda yadda—but watching a guy who just got promoted mid-crisis try to navigate nuclear annihilation had me alternating between awe at Basso’s composure and laughter at how unrealistic it all was. That Jake is basically walking the streets of Washington, Facetiming a secured, heads-of-state-level classified call, makes the “signal chat issue” unintentionally comical.

Major events? Left hanging. Tension? Slowly bled away after the first go-round of the repeated countdown. And then we hit Reid Baker (Jared Harris), Secretary of Defense. Instead of evacuating to a bunker with the President, he decides, “Eh, rooftop helipad it is,” and leaps to his doom. His final phone call to his daughter? Heart-wrenching if you’re willing to piece together the grief and despair but the actual act is over in a blink. Blink and you’ve missed it. The moral paralysis is supposed to be emotional, but it lands more like a “Wait, that’s it?” shrug.

And then there’s Cathy Rogers, played by Moses Ingram, a FEMA official with the Office of National Continuity Programs. I still haven’t figured out why her character was even in the movie. What was she supposed to convey? A cautionary tale about government bureaucracy? A subtle commentary on disaster preparedness? Nope. Just a very odd, throwaway character who happens to have a prenup and is browsing Zillow for an apartment while the world is about to end. If that’s the level of “high stakes” we’re working with, I’ll take my chances in Chicago with a nuclear missile heading my way—at least I wouldn’t be checking real estate listings while civilization collapses.

Some positives? Rebecca Ferguson is flawless as Captain Olivia Walker, injecting a little life into the otherwise AI generated cast. There’s also a fleeting sense of real stakes, and yes, Bigelow’s direction is technically flawless. The cinematography is sharp, the editing crisp, the score Meh, and very forgettable. But by the time the movie ends abruptly, with unresolved tension, I was left with the cinematic equivalent of standing on Bob Barker’s Let’s Make a Deal, reaching behind Curtain Number Three, expecting a luxury sports car, and getting a Temu-brand tricycle instead. Zonk!

In short: House of Dynamite had the pedigree, the talent, and the potential to be a modern nuclear-crisis classic. Instead, it’s repetitive, hollow, and ultimately unsatisfying. The replaying of the same events from different viewpoints is clever in theory but dull in practice. Time could have been better spent developing the characters, giving us a reason to care, or dare I say it actually delivering the high-stakes drama promised by the premise.

For me, this was less a house of dynamite and more a house of duds. I came in ready for fireworks, and all I got was a Wile E. Coyote-style Acme stick of dynamite that fizzled before it even left the box.