Review 761: A House of Dynamite

                                         

Kathryn Bigelow has done it again! Crafting a tense, edge of your seat thriller that keeps you guessing and scared for the people involved right up until the very last frame 

Broken up into 3 vignettes telling the story from different perspectives, this film unfolds like a 3 act play. The screenplay by Noah Oppenheim feels tight and concise, operating in real time, it unfold like an extended episode of 24. 

"Dynamite", Bigelow's first film since 2017's Detroit  Her last two films in particular, The Hurt Locker (which I & many others loved) and Zero Dark Thirty (unloved by me, but not by critics in general) delt 

the production design is excellent, bringing a level of authenticity and veracity to the film by recreating, U.S. Army bunkers, the Pentagon the score by Volker Bertelmann is 

It's worth noting how smartly and well Bigwlow has cast A House of Dynamite. Rebecca Ferguson, Idris Elba, Gabriel Basso (fresh off of Clint Eastwood's Juror #2), Jared Harris, Tracy Letts, Anthony Ramos, Moses Ingram, Jonah Hauer-King, Greta Lee, Jason Clarke, Brian Tee, Brittany O'Grady from HBO's The White Lotus, Willa Fitzgerald, Renee Elise Goldsberry (who many will recognise from theatre and TV, particularly Marvel's She-Hulk) & Kaitlyn "Abby" Dever. Impressive. All of them make you feel their fear and the urgency of the situation in every scene 

At the centre of the ensemble and indeed, the whole film, we have Rebecca Ferguson as Cap. Olivia Walker whom we follow for the first act of the film. Olivia is the senior  brining depth to the character in the short time that she is onscreen. 

You really can't go wrong with Idris Elba as the President of the U.S. and he dug his nails into the How can a film starring a Black President in a post-Obama world be seen as anything other than a jab at the current one.