A House of Dynamite is now streaming on Netflix, and it quickly shot to the number 1 movie on the streaming service since its debut.
The Kathryn Bigelow-directed political thriller features an all-star, ensemble cast including Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, Anthony Ramos, Greta Lee, Jonah Hauer-King, Jason Clarke, Renée Elise Goldsberry, and Tracy Letts.
The ending of the film left a lot up-in-the-air after that 18 minute countdown, and we’re breaking it all down here.
Keep reading to find out more…
If you didn’t watch yet, the film is in three parts. Each part focuses on a different government response to the impending missile strike, with only 18 minutes to handle the situation.
At the end of part 3, which is when we’re finally introduced to the President (Elba), we see him struggle with the decision to launch a retaliatory attack with our own arsenal of nuclear weapons. He even calls his wife (Goldsberry) to try and get her to help him decide.
When the film ends, we have no idea if the bomb hits land, if it goes off, or if it somehow does not detonate.
Katheryn told Netflix, “The film is a portrait of people at the highest level of government being called on to make impossible decisions in the most extreme circumstances imaginable. When there’s just 18 minutes to react, a lot of these political talking points tend to fall away pretty quickly.”
About why you don’t see the bomb’s impact on Chicago, she further explained, “I want audiences to leave theaters thinking, ‘OK, what do we do now?’ This is a global issue, and of course I hope against hope that maybe we reduce the nuclear stockpile someday. But in the meantime, we really are living in a house of dynamite. I felt it was so important to get that information out there, so we could start a conversation. That’s the explosion we’re interested in — the conversation people have about the film afterward.” She added that the ambiguous ending was purposeful “in order to start a conversation…Let the audience have a moment to decide what ending they want.”
Even Idris did not know what the President ended up deciding, telling Screen Rant, “Unfortunately, it is the sacrifice of having 10 million people die versus the entire planet would’ve probably been his decision. But I don’t know. I don’t know. We didn’t want to know the answer.”
If you don’t know, the film received rave reviews.
Source: justjared.com