A House of Dynamite

✰✰✰✰​ (out of five)

Synopsis: From Academy Award® winning director Kathryn Bigelow comes A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE. When a single, unattributed missile is launched at the United States, a race begins to determine who is responsible and how to respond.

Review: Bigelow has made a name over the past couple decades as a go-to for ratcheted tension and suspense. Sure, she had that groundwork laid earlier in her career, but her award-winning The Hurt Locker changed everything.  Zero Dark Thirty arrived with equal--if not more--fanfare. After the perceived failure of Detroit, Bigelow has retuned almost a decade later with an improved vigor and sense of purpose in A House of Dynamite. Told across three main chapters, the film is episodic like a TV show watched on binge. While I could see the film as a brief miniseries, it works best to watch each section consecutively--hence, the feature film, as it keeps the suspense at a constant. And boy does it continue at each rewind to the next perspective... until the end. I suppose it's true purpose is to leave us unnerved, but the ambiguous ending left me indifferent. I felt the story earned a moment of closure, but Bigelow still prides an effective finale that left many pondering. The film does add some relevance to our times, advertising it's civilian workforce as essential tot he success of the country, never undermining. One may find the serial tactic a dilution of the tension, but I found it an effective wire act of stable instability, one primed to go off any minute. I suppose that is the danger Bigelow thrives on, much like Jeremy Renner's Hurt Locker character and those leading us through A House of Dynamite: runs toward the element of fear to get the job done.