Year 18, Day 19 - 1/19/26 - Movie #5,219
BEFORE: Well, I survived the weekend working at the NY Videogame Awards (now it's just called the "Game Awards", I guess, but whatever) and it was a bit rough - 14 hours on shift yesterday, but I didn't have to do much for the first five, so there's that. On my way there, I passed another movie theater (one that rents out private rooms to groups and also provides catering, so I guess that's a thing now) and they were screening several movies, including "Greenland 2". I suppose that was inevitable, but it made me realize it's the PERFECT time to release a movie if it has "Greenland" in the title, because of current events, with Trump threatening to invade it. Then I wondered if maybe Trump watched the first "Greenland" movie, and if so, is that why he wants it so badly? Because it's a safe place for Americans to go if the U.S. comes under a missile attack? And if so, does anyone else realize that Trump is getting his foreign policy ideas from movies? There was a documentary about Venezuela titled "Men of War", about the failed 2020 attempt to overthrow Maduro, and now I'm wondering - but Trump doesn't seem like the type of person to watch docs, he seems more likely to watch "Aquaman" and then decide we have to invade Atlantis.
Anyway, timing is everything so I've put a film with an African-American President on MLK Day, this makes sense in MY mind, anyway, and Idris Elba carries over again from "Fixed". Is this inappropriate? Honestly I'm not quite sure.
AFTER: Other than having perhaps the world's most boring movie poster ever, what sets "A House of Dynamite" apart is its unique structure. The story of a single rogue (?) missile headed toward takes only 20 minutes or so to tell, because that's how long the missile takes, I guess. Missiles move very fast, you see. So we see the whole thing unfold from the point of view of Capt. Olivia Walker in the Situation Room and also the soldiers at Fort Greely, who would apparently be the ones in charge of shooting down a missile headed for Chicago, should there be one. Many other characters appear via teleconference, such as the Secretary of Defense and (eventually) the President. The attempt to shoot down that missile is unsuccessful, or in military terms there was a "negative impact" from the interceptors. Other things happen once the POTUS joins the conference, they try to determine what Asian entity might be responsible for launching the missile, and the Russian defense ministers are contacted to try to confirm the missile's origin, also to get Russian to not retaliate if the U.S. should have to, umm, retaliate. There's this funky thing called "Mutually Assured Destruction", which basically states that if one country starts a nuclear war, the other side is bound to do the same, and that's it for humanity, I guess. With only a few minutes to go before impact, Walker calls her husband and asks him to leave D.C. with their son.
Then the narrative snaps back to the beginning, and the same chain of events is seen from another perspective, that of the military commander at STRATCOM (U.S. strategic command) and he's on that same conference call that we've seen before, he talks with the President, which we've seen before, and this guy is pushing hard for immediate retaliation. We get to the same point in time again and the narrative snaps back again, this time following a Deputy National Security Advisor named Jake Baerington, who rushes to get an expert on North Korea on the phone to determine if the missile is from there, then he works on speaking with the Russians to find out if the missile is theirs. Finally Jake talks to the President and he's an advocate for NOT retaliating. But is that really what the American people want, to take the hit? The President really wants to know what to do here.
Maddeningly, the narrative snaps back AGAIN to follow the Sec Def, and then AGAIN to follow the President, who is given no last name here. President Potus, I guess, which would be an awfully wild coincidence if that were his last name. The President is seen at a basketball event with a WNBA star and some of America's youth, and this kind of calls to mind how George W. Bush was reading to school children when he was alerted about the 9/11 event. But W. didn't have the jump-shot that this President has, and that kind of calls Obama to mind, doesn't it? Anyway the Secret Service receive word of the incoming missile, and the President is whisked away by limo so he can be on those conference calls that we've heard several times already.
The President is airlifted by Marine One to an undisclosed location, and then we realize that certain important people have been disappearing from each telling of this story, and it's because some people have been pre-selected to spend time in an underground bunker, to insure that our country and society can re-build after an extinction event. The President then has to weigh his options, knowing that a missile is about to obliterate Chicago. Does he follow the advice of the STRATCOM General, who suggests retaliation, or the recommendation of the National Security Advisor who claims that striking back blindly without knowing the origin of the missile would be pointless and suicidal?
Well, really, get used to disappointment here because this film is designed to generate a lot of questions without really providing any answers. Perhaps the conclusion is ambiguous so that viewers can enjoy whichever scenario they prefer, but largely this also feels like a giant cop-out. We're drawn RIGHT up to the most exciting bit and then we're left hanging. Like, I get it, there's a story there perhaps that somebody didn't want to tell, the implications of society's destruction and radiation fall-out and the aftermath are ones we all understand, they don't NEED to be depicted. Still, it would be nice if the storytellers could finish what they started, just saying.
How accurate is this? It's tough to say - our U.S. Department of Defense didn't particularly care for the suggestion that they could launch an interceptor missile and MISS their target, because according to them, this system which has NEVER been used has a success rate of 100% and a failure rate of 0%. Well, that's awfully convenient - if I never start my car, I'd have to admit that I don't know whether it works or not, I shouldn't just assume the car will start because it's never failed me before, when realistically I've never even TRIED to start it. The process of intercepting a missile is compared to "firing a bullet at a bullet", which really only worked in "The Suicide Squad".
This might seem a bit like the "Rashomon" method of storytelling, where the same story is told several times by different people, and changes a little bit each time. But that's not really the case here, the same story is told here by different people, and is exactly the same each time, and maddeningly so. Is that the point, to show that nuclear war is inevitable and can't be stopped once it's started, or is there any hope for the future that our efforts can change things? Well, results are maddeningly inconclusive, that's for sure. Also, why take nearly two hours to tell a 20-minute story, or was it too confusing if everything played out just once?
Look, my theory here is that some foreign power targeted Chicago specifically to eliminate the cuisine from that city from the planet. And they would be doing us a favor - have you seen what people in Chicago put on a hot dog? I'm fine with yellow mustard, sweet relish and white onions, but then after that it's just Crazytown - tomato wedges have NO PLACE on a hot dog, pickled peppers is a definite HELL NO and then celery salt is completely USELESS. Then they add a PICKLE SPEAR, which you absolutely DO NOT need, because you already have pickle relish on there. Sure, drag it "through the garden" and then throw that whole mess into the trash. And you can throw giardiniera (pickled vegetables in vinegar) right into the trash with those extra hot dog toppings, and don't even get me STARTED on Chicago-style deep dish pizza.
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow (director of "Strange Days" and "The Weight of Water")
Also starring Rebecca Ferguson (last seen in "Dune: Part Two"), Gabriel Basso (last seen in "Barely Lethal"), Jared Harris (last heard in "The Sea Beast"), Tracy Letts (last seen in "Saturday Night"), Anthony Ramos (last seen in "Twisters"), Moses Ingram (last seen in "Ambulance"), Jonah Hauer-King (last seen in "The Little Mermaid" (2023)), Greta Lee (last heard in "The Tiger's Apprentice"), Jason Clarke (last seen in "Oppenheimer"), Malachi Beasley, Brian Tee (last seen in "We Were Soldiers"), Brittany O'Grady, Gbenga Akinnagbe (last seen in "Passing"), Willa Fitzgerald (last seen in "18 1/2"), Renee Elise Goldsberry (last seen in "Tick, Tick...Boom!", Kyle Allen (last seen in "Space Oddity"), Kaitlyn Dever (last seen in "Men, Women & Children"), Neal Bledsoe, Nicholas Monterosso, Chance Kelly (last seen in "Broken City"), Enid Graham (last seen in "Margot at the Wedding"), J.W. Cortes, Caleb Eberhardt (last seen in "Judas and the Black Messiah"), Sam Vartholomeos (last seen in "Drive-Away Dolls"), Francesca Carpanini, Abubakr Ali, Aminah Nieves, Daniel L. Karbler, Philip Lenz, Timothy Brester, Ben Chase (last seen in "The Last Thing He Wanted"), Renrick Palmer, Patrick Feeney, Bryan Harlow, Shane R. Duffy, Vincent Hickman, Kevin O'Connor, Evan Rubin, Gary Wilmes (last seen in "A Rainy Day in New York"), Ezrah Lin, Andreiu Kouznetsov, Alexander Sokovikov, Spencer House (last seen in "The Big Sick"), John Zdrojeski, Samantha Soule (last seen in "The Irishman"), Quincy Dunn-Baker (last seen in "Nonnas"), Jared Reinfeldt (last seen in "Little Women"), Lynn Adrianna Freedman (last seen in "Gone Girl"), Tai Bennett, Greg Schweers,
RATING: 6 out of 10 Confederate soldiers re-enacting Gettysburg
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