A House Of Dynamite’s Flawed Narrative Structure Holds It Back From Greatness

Warning: This contains spoilers for the ending of A House of Dynamite!The newly released A House of Dynamite was one of the most highly anticipated films to hit Netflix in 2025. The premise was as intriguing as it gets and it helped that the movie was directed by Oscar-winner Kathryn Bigelow. Add in a cast loaded with talents like Rebecca Ferguson and Idris Elba, and this felt like a surefire hit.

While A House of Dynamite did climb the charts on Netflix and topped it during its first week on the platform, reception has been less favorable than many expected. It holds a strong 78% Rotten Tomatoes rating, but that’s lower than Bigelow’s best films, like The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty.

You can point to one key thing that causes the biggest problems with A House of Dynamite, which keeps it from being truly great.

A House Of Dynamite Has The Best Opening 35 Minutes In Recent Memory

A House of Dynamite centers on how members of the United States government react when a single nuclear missile is launched at the country and nobody can tell where it came from. That sets the stage for the first act of the film, which is incredibly gripping and keeps you on the edge of your seat.

We mostly follow this through the eyes of Olivia Walker (Ferguson), a member of the White House Situation Room. She’s the first character we connect with, and her bond with her co-workers is enough to make us really care about them more than anyone else in the movie.

The first 35 or so minutes of A House of Dynamite are among the best in any 2025 movie. The countdown pops up for the missile to strike and each passing second grows more and more tense. The entire thing is a masterclass at building tension and is some of Bigelow’s best work, which is saying something.

A House Of Dynamite Loses Momentum When it Changes POVs

The thing holding A House of Dynamite back is the narrative structure, which tells the story through multiple points of view. Just as the opening act peaks and the missile is about to make impact, the film cuts back and changes the perspective to that of various military personnel and how they react to the news.

That brings the movie to an absolute standstill and the intensity that we felt for the first 40 or so minutes vanishes. Once this section of the film is done, it cuts back again, this time to give us the perspective of the President of the United States (Elba). This isn’t a new storytelling strategy, yet it fails here.

TV shows and movies like 2008’s Vantage Point have pulled the same trick. However, A House of Dynamite gets off to such a strong start that moving away to a less interesting perspective kills momentum, and the film never regains it. That turns something that felt like a truly great film into something that ultimately ends up just being good.

The New POVs Don’t Add Much To A House Of Dynamite

The idea of going with the different points of view in A House of Dynamite makes sense in the case that the movie is meant to really show us how various groups would respond in this emergency situation. It shows us how things can escalate to frightening levels out of nothing more than pure fear.

On the surface, that’s still a fascinating story to tell. However, these new points of view don’t add all that much to the movie. We don’t learn all that much from the military and the President’s perspectives that we didn’t understand when it was Olivia’s POV, making the whole thing kind of moot.

In that first section of the film where we follow Olivia, we hear from the military personnel and from the President, meaning a lot of their POVs are just them repeating those things. The most interesting thing to come from the new POVs is the President having to make the decision on how the country retaliates.

The Disappointing Ending Adds To A House Of Dynamite’s Problems

The ending of A House of Dynamite has been very controversial. The President calls his wife for advice but ultimately is still left with the agonizing decision of what to do next. Does the country retaliate without knowing the missile’s origin? It’s a burning question that could’ve made the various POVs feel worthwhile.

However, people are upset that the President’s decision is never shown. The film cuts to black and the credits roll, leaving viewers feeling unsatisfied. Recently, Kathryn Bigelow addressed the ending, saying:

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.

That’s an understandable concept given the state of the world, and it’s a bold choice. However, it’s one that left a sour taste in the mouths of many audience members. Sitting through the various POVs after the momentum of the film was stalled would’ve been fine if viewers got a satisfying ending.

Unfortunately, that’s not what happened, and the lackluster ending, combined with the issue of the narrative structure, leads A House of Dynamite to feel like a phenomenal 40-minute short film stretched to two hours.