A House of Dynamite

As a Gen X-er who grew up during the throes of the Cold War -- watching Kathryn Bigelow's A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE is such an anxious, nail-biting experience that I offer no apologies for naming it the scariest film of the year.

We are spared the horrors shown in the 1984 BBC sensation THREADS -- and instead given a very 21st century crash course on US missile defense systems after a seemingly rogue ICBM is launched over the Sea of Japan, showing a trajectory to North America, and the unfolding drama before all hell breaks loose.

As the minutes dangerously tick by, a military outpost on the western tip of Alaska (Greely, Alaska) offers America its only viable option to shoot down the incoming nuclear warhead.

Situation rooms scramble together, military generals weigh in via conference calls with limited info and a lot of conjecture, and an itinerant US President (Idris Elba) weigh ifs and buts with rapidly diminishing time left before the unthinkable may happen. In that morass of confusion, the questions swirl --

\Preemptively strike our foes to stave off being vulnerable -- even if we are not sure if they are behind it?

\Hold off and absorb the impact -- and fallout -- until more information is forthcoming?

\*What is the true cost of a nuclear 9/11 with 1,000X more death and suffering to the American psyche?

As options inevitably shrink and the fog of war obscures any sense of certitude -- Bigelow's film takes viewers on a terrifying ride into the unknown -- and leaves us alone with our imaginations of what happens next.

I was absolutely terrified watching this -- and awoke this morning to write this review after having something I haven't had in years: nightmares.

Yes, actual nightmares.

Some may wonder if Bigelow's film inadvertently makes the case for something Trump, in his megalomaniacal stupor has already verbally suggested for our own US defense systems: installing our very own 'Golden Dome' (like Israel) for the United States.

But one moral argument against such preemption for such a plan is the provocation this offers the world, as a Golden Dome'd America might feel even more emboldened to provoke its enemies and impose its financial and military interests around the world more than it currently does.

Just like Israel has done in the Middle East.

Regardless of what we think about America's preparedness in

There's something of the "WarGames" (1983) meets "Crimson Tide" (1995) to this disappointing thriller. It's all about a rogue missile that has been fired - destination Chicago. "Walker" (Rebecca Ferguson) is in charge of the military situation room responsible for identifying this object and it's source before, hopefully, disabling the thing. Initially there is a relatively relaxed attitude amongst the confident team but gradually as it gets ever closer and their $50 billions technology doesn't sort things out, a sense of panic begins to creep in and soon it all rests with POTUS. Will he authorise a retaliation? If so, then against whom? His national security lad (Gabriel Basso) isn't at all confident that it is any of the usual suspects. The first half of the story is told from the perspective of those crafting the advice, the second from that of the man charged with making the decision (Idris Elba), but sadly neither aspect of the plot is particularly new or interesting and by the conclusion all it really told me was what Basil Rathbone postulated in "The Pearl of Death" (1944): electricity is the enemy of security. Here, the overwhelming reliance on machines to tell us what other machines may or may not have done is really quite telling, as is the obvious situation in which the President of the United States - without consultation with anyone else in the world - has to make a decision so long as someone way more qualified actually tells him what is best to do for the entire human race. None of the acting really stands out and the story is sacrificed in order to make a much more generically political point that once clear - after about twenty minutes - renders the rest of this all fairly repetitious and meaningless.