A Kathryn Bigelow film always comes with a level of intensity to its premise. The Hurt Locker took audiences right to the palm-sweating frontlines of bomb disposals in Iraq; Zero Dark Thirty got into the heart of the hunt for bin Laden. And now, eight years after Detroit, Bigelow is back with a fictional story in A House Of Dynamite – but one that feels all-too-real, and approached with her usual signature rigourousness.
Bigelow’s latest film depicts what happens when an intercontinental nuclear missile is launched at the United States – kicking off a chain of events that reverberate down the military chain of command. For Bigelow, it allows her to explore another big question about the state of America. “With The Hurt Locker I was really interested in understanding the methodology of the [Iraqi] insurgency,” she tells Empire. “And how an EOD tech, an Explosive Ordnance Disposal tech, would go about disarming those bombs. With Zero Dark Thirty, the question was: why did the hunt for Osama bin Laden take ten years? And in this case, it’s the nuclear umbrella. How vulnerable are we really?”
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The prospect is, frankly, terrifying. Could A House Of Dynamite prompt a rethink in how the world has chosen to arm itself? “My dream scenario would be a reduction of the nuclear stockpile,” says Bigelow. “That would be a sane response to what we’ve created. I don’t understand how annihilation is a defence measure, and that’s my biggest conundrum. ‘Oh, good, I’m very well defended, but we’re all dead.’ No, that doesn’t work!” Here’s hoping A House Of Dynamite stays firmly in the region of fiction.