I just got through reading Dan Brown’s Deception Point for the “372 Pages We’ll Never Get Back” podcast and boy are my arms tired!

No, wait, wrong joke.

Brown likes short chapters, and he also likes cliffhangers, and over the course of 133 chapters, this can be a little wearing. He’ll end a chapter with a button that suggests something big is up, then he’ll switch to a different thread, then when you finally get back to the cliffhanger resolution, it turns out to be not that big a deal or weirdly artificial. I mention this because about a third of the way into A House of Dynamite, we’re at what should be the climax (at least of the first act) and…

…the movie resets.

That’s right. It’s sort of a Rashomon with the same story being told three times.

The shocking twist here is that it’s retold twice with very little change! In other words, while we get the story from three perspectives, those perspectives are largely in agreement and—I don’t want to say they don’t bring anything new to the experience, exactly. But what they bring is literally just slices of different people’s lives.

On the first iteration, I wanted to shout “Nooooooo!” but I’m going to blame that on Dan Brown. So starved am I of proper resolutions I was, let’s say, on edge about this.

But by the third iteration I was just bored. And a little pissed because there’s no payoff. But again that might be the Brown effect. It was clear by the second iteration there wasn’t going to be a payoff, that the point was the events leading to the denouement. I can’t really blame it for not being the movie I wanted to see, which could have proceeded by showing the after-effect of The Event, which could’ve been literally anything or nothing, either one giving a fruitful field to harvest.

The critical point has to do with an explosion that could’ve occurred, could’ve not occurred, could’ve been very significant, could’ve been misconstrued, etc. (I’m being vague because I don’t want to spoil anything.)

There are a lot of threads spun out addressing potential causes of the problem, but none of them are ever paid off. (Fair enough, not the point.)

But we never get the Earth-Shattering Boom. We do get a lot of things that, while not Dan Brown level of dumb, really don’t impress the viewer with the competence of the people In Charge. Which, you know, is probably pretty accurate. Apparently, no President has taken part in a nuclear war drill since Reagan.

Anyway, the first time through is compelling stuff, because we don’t know the outcome. The second time is less compelling. The third time is kind of dull. The Boy thought there had been four iterations because the second one is very muddled, but I assured him if there had been a fourth iteration, I would’ve died.

The acting is tolerable. I didn’t think Idris Elba seemed even slightly Presidential, but this was probably deliberate. We’ve had a lotta boobs running the country. Artistically, it’s a weird choice to portray people as very competent and yet utterly incompetent at the same time. That is what this movie is all about, after all, if only accidentally: With a multi-trillion dollar budget, our government can’t do what is literally the most important thing.

It’s not even good anti-nuke propaganda because our nukes aren’t the problem. Or maybe it’s along gun control lines “If we take guns from the good guys, we’ll be safe!” Very muddled, which is pretty on-brand for Bigelow. (Good guy surfer bank robbers, conflicted vampires and cops, she’s kind of classic Boomer grey morality, because life is like that, man.)

Production values are top notch. I mean, it seems a little weird to celebrate the very competent visuals and audio, but here we are in 2025, happy to just be able to see and hear things.

The music is great. I longed a bit for a more traditional score but it wouldn’t have fit here. At the same time, it wasn’t a super-spare bunch of bizz-buzz. The tones and themes really boosted the tension and emotion.

You might say “But Blake, when you notice the music, isn’t that bad?”

My response to that would be, “Well, look, third time through the story, it’s not like you’re processing a bunch of new information. Gotta pay attention to something and it’s not the story.”

Anyway, this is one it helps to have an idea of what you’re getting going in, because otherwise you might be disappointed. It’s not a three-act play, it’s three one-act plays.