Global peace is a house of cards

A House of Dynamite shows the fragility of a world where nuclear weapons remain at hand. By Sandra Visser

- By Sandra Visser

Eight years after her previous film — the crime drama Detroit — received a muted response, director Kathryn Bigelow returns to the genre in which she's won her greatest acclaim.

Although Bigelow describes her new war thriller as part of an "unofficial triptych" formed with The Hurt Locker (2008) — for which she became the first woman to win an Oscar for best director — and Zero Dark Thirty (2012), A House of Dynamite is unlike the first two in that it doesn't offer a snapshot of a single character's involvement in a historical US military operation. Instead, it creates a frighteningly realistic what-if scenario that serves as a cautionary tale to a public that has become largely complacent about the threat of nuclear war.

At the end of the Cold War, the film tells us, leaders around the globe agreed that the world was better off with fewer nuclear weapons. But since then, the threat of mutually assured destruction — that if one superpower were to attack another with a nuclear bomb, they would end up destroying each other — has largely fallen from the public consciousness. More than offering entertainment, Bigelow's latest film wants to remind viewers that in keeping these nuclear arsenals, we are all living in a house filled with dynamite that could blow at any second.