Critic's Notebook

Netflix

Kathryn Bigelow’s latest, Venice International Film Festival competition entry “A House of Dynamite,” is, for the most part, one of those end-of-days Armageddon movies, except it never actually culminates in special effects-laden spectacles of total obliteration. The film does not follow the Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich blockbuster tradition. Instead, it focuses solely on those behind the scenes trying to respond and stave off the impending destruction.

Presiding over the White House Situation Room is Capt. Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson), whom we first met tending to her toddler’s high temperature at 3 a.m. She works alongside Senior Chief Petty Officer William Davis (Malachi Beasley), who is on the fence about proposing to his girlfriend. What initially seems like an ordinary day turns out to be anything but. Radar detects a nuclear weapon of unknown origin estimated to strike in 19 minutes in Chicago, where 10 million lives are at stake.

A Zoom conference call is immediately set up for the president (Idris Elba), Secretary of Defense Reid Baker (Jared Harris), Gen. Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts) and Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington (Gabriel Basso), among others, to determine best courses of action both militarily though interception and potential retaliation, and diplomatically by conferring with the Russian president.

All nonessential staff members are sent home. Some government functionaries initially mistake their orders for a drill. But despite having rehearsed “a thousand times,” a few still choke under the pressure. And as with typical characters from disaster movies, some urge their loved ones to drive away as far as they can from urban centers, while others try to squeeze in a few parting words.

Everything seems to unfold in real time. Barry Ackroyd’s handheld camera and sporadic zooming in and out fashion a sense of documentary. Though Jeremy Hindle’s production designs come across as too gleaming and not lived-in enough, projecting an unfortunate TV aesthetic (think “The West Wing” or “Designated Survivor”) that’s difficult to shake. Then again, this is a Netflix production.

What sets “A House of Dynamite” apart from its disaster movie and political drama counterparts is the lack of resolution. Instead, Noah Oppenheim’s screenplay treads the same timelines three times, each from a different perspective. The second and third segments take us behind the little squares and blocked cameras of the Zoom call, repeating the same dialogue but revealing additional context.

The film doesn’t have a hero; it is an ensemble piece, with none of the characters really standing out. We get glimpses into the private life of FEMA employee Cathy Rogers (Moses Ingram), but she isn’t significant to the plot. Then we have Ana Park (Greta Lee), expert on North Korea, inexplicably in Gettysburg, Penn., with her son to observe a Civil War reenactment. If there’s significance to this vignette within the plot, the film certainly doesn’t spell it out.

Still, all the characters appear to take their roles quite seriously knowing full well the potential consequences of their actions. If nothing else, “A House of Dynamite” gets you thinking about how the circus act that is the current administration may react in such a crisis – a thought so noxious that you may not wish to dwell on it for long.