A House Of Dynamite (15, 112 mins)
Verdict: Explosive thriller
How might the United States respond in the event of a nuclear attack, with less than 20 minutes before an incoming missile lands on Chicago?
Even with all the satellite technology at their disposal, military intelligence chiefs have no idea which of their country’s enemies launched the missile, only that it began its potentially cataclysmic journey somewhere in the Pacific.
That is the alarmingly plausible crisis at the heart of Kathryn Bigelow’s breathlessly pacy thriller A House Of Dynamite.
Bigelow was the first woman to be crowned Best Director at the Academy Awards, for the 2008 action thriller The Hurt Locker.
She is still (with Chloe Zhao and Jane Campion) one of only three women to win the coveted prize, and I wouldn’t bet against her becoming the first to win it twice with this riveting film, which is divided into three acts, each chronicling the same events from a different perspective.
We don’t see the US President (Idris Elba) until the third act when, after being hurriedly ushered out of a jolly visit to a school (echoing the moment George W Bush was told about the 9/11 attacks), he must decide whether to retaliate before Chicago is obliterated.
But retaliate against who? China? Russia? North Korea? Iran? All the above?
The Russians are aware of the missile but say it’s nothing to do with them. Maybe it was even launched by accident, a scenario that inspired a terrific movie at the height of the Cold War, Sidney Lumet’s 1964 thriller Fail Safe.
Now, as then, the world teeters on the brink of disaster.
Some ten million people will die in Chicago if the missile detonates, hundreds of millions more around the world if POTUS activates the nuclear codes.
These are carried by a fresh-faced military man (Jonah Hauer-King) whose job is to advise his boss on the various magnitudes of response open to him. ‘It’s like a diner menu,’ says the President, with gallows humour.
Bigelow’s film superbly evokes the furnace of decision-making that such an agonising dilemma might ignite.
There is a clanging ring of truth to the conflicting advice the President gets, from a gung-ho army general (Tracy Letts) insistent that there must be some kind of response before it’s too late, to the startlingly young Deputy National Security Advisor (Gabriel Basso), who counsels restraint.
The excellent screenplay is by Noah Oppenheim, a former television executive, indeed president of NBC News, who doubtless tapped his White House contacts for insight.
Rebecca Ferguson take on the role of Captain Olivia Walker in A House of Dynamite
Anthony Ramos as Major Daniel Gonzale in the explosive thriller
Commendably, he and Bigelow do not talk down to their audience, in what, in a way, feels like a feature-length episode of The West Wing.
But much as I admired Aaron Sorkin’s hit TV drama, there was a quickfire glibness to the dialogue that is wholly lacking here. Nobody on this white-knuckle ride has time to be a smart aleck.
Also, like all the scariest white-knuckle rides, it doesn’t last too long.
Bigelow wisely keeps her film under two hours and resists the temptation to tell us too much about the personal lives of her protagonists.
Instead, we learn just enough. The commander of a military base in Alaska (Anthony Ramos) is having unspecified domestic issues.
Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson), who takes charge in the White House Situation Room, is a loving wife and mother.
Elsewhere, a key expert on North Korea (Greta Lee) is spending her day off with her son at a reconstruction of the US Civil War Battle of Gettysburg, gently rebuking him when he calls the spectacle ‘awesome’.
There were 50,000 killed at Gettysburg in three days, she notes. It’s the only clunky line in the entire film. Clearly we’re meant to compare what constituted huge wartime casualties then, with now.
Then there’s Secretary of Defence Reid Baker (Jared Harris), semi-estranged from his grown-up daughter, who lives in Chicago. In just a few minutes, she might be vaporised.
Coincidentally, Harris also starred in Chernobyl, the brilliant 2019 TV drama that chronicled the events surrounding an actual nuclear disaster.
This, in a sense, is a companion piece, about a nuclear catastrophe that mercifully hasn’t yet happened in real life.
But Bigelow’s message is plain. We all live in a house filled with dynamite. So it might yet.
The Smashing Machine (15, 123 mins)
Verdict: Packs a big punch
One man’s sporting career is on the line in The Smashing Machine, rather than millions of lives.
But the film still packs a mighty punch – and in more ways than one, for it tells the true story, over three years from 1997, of mixed martial arts fighter Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson).
Kerr, one of the pioneers of MMA in the days when it was huge only in Japan, is an outsized man-child, so petrified by the idea of defeat that he will try anything to stave it off, including steroid abuse, to the despair of his over-manicured partner Dawn (Emily Blunt).
‘You lost a fight, big deal, just get over it,’ she implores. His response is to destroy a door.
Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt start in The Smashing Machine, the story of mixed-martial arts and UFC champion Mark Ker
Benny Safdie’s film is less about sport, more a compellingly intimate portrait of a couple’s relationship that, for all the top-notch supporting acts (including one by world heavyweight boxing champion Oleksandr Usyk), relies utterly on its two leads.
Johnson and Blunt have formed a lively double-act before, in Disney’s 2021 action comedy Jungle Cruise. But this is different.
In particular, we’ve never seen Johnson in this kind of role, and he rises to it majestically, an unfamiliar style of performance topped off with a commensurately unfamiliar head of hair.
Both films are in cinemas now.
Fine singers, but this Cinders is anything but charming
Cinderella (English National Opera)
Verdict: Three splendid voices, too much clutter
This silly production takes us back to the days when companies routinely mucked about with Rossini.
We are spared jugglers and fire-swallowers, but hardly anyone is allowed to sing an aria without crowds of bodies bobbing about.
As the curtain rises – after we have already suffered irrelevant scenes during the Overture – the dread reality emerges: A set with doors! A lift constantly opening and shutting!! And bits at each side that keep revolving!!! The stage soon fills with louche types.
The English ‘translation’ by Christopher Cowell lurches from the inappropriate to the vulgar. Listening to lines such as ‘I love to vibe the night away’ or ‘Get your arse out of the way’, you realise you are a long way from the Age of Bel Canto.
Director Julia Burbach has a silent Woman In Green haunting the set, helping the right-hand bit to move, or just getting in the way. It makes a change from the usual Symbolic Old Lady.
But we do get Symbolic Child replicas of Cinderella’s family. Presumably the mice are a nod to Perrault’s original tale.
Omani-born mezzo-soprano Deepa Johnny is a touching Cinderella whose technique encompasses all the flourishes Rossini throws at her
Three terrific young singers just about save the day. Omani-born mezzo-soprano Deepa Johnny is a touching Cinderella whose technique encompasses all the flourishes Rossini throws at her.
British tenor Aaron Godfrey-Mayes, as Prince Ramiro, has a lovely lyric quality and a superb technique.
As Dandini, the Prince’s valet who impersonates him while he sizes up the talent, British baritone Charles Rice has a pleasing personality that enables him to play this pivotal character while singing with humour, clarity and skill.
Simon Bailey lacks the true basso buffo’s vocal rotundity needed to play Cinderella’s wicked stepfather.
Worst of all, Alidoro, who should provide the one source of humanity in Cinderella’s life, is portrayed by David Ireland as a suited businessman; his vital role in the first scene, where he arrives disguised as a delivery man bringing parcels for Cinderella’s sisters, is lost among the clutter.
And when one thinks of the operatic comediennes who have virtually made a career out of playing sisters Clorinda and Tisbe, Isabelle Peters and Grace Durham barely move the needle on the laugh-graph.
Yi-Chen Lin conducts with a good deal of zip, despite the unwieldy script, which hurls spanners into intricate ensembles. The orchestra plays well and the male chorus, some of whom have to appear in drag, cope adequately.
It’s worth noting that the first-night audience loved it much more than I did.
At London Coliseum until October 14.
The homeless beggar you’ll be rooting for
Urchin (15, 99 mins)
Not yet 30, Harris Dickinson has a thriving acting career and will play John Lennon in Sam Mendes’s keenly awaited four-part biopic of The Beatles.
But there are other strings to his rhythm guitar. Dickinson’s debut as a writer and director, was deservedly well received at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Dickinson’s debut as a writer and director, was deservedly well received at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Pictured: A still from the film Urchin
Frank Dillane is superb in the central role of Mike (right), a homeless man in London who begs and steals and seems to blow every chance given to him, yet the strength of the writing and acting is such that we root for him to fall on his feet for once.
There’s an especially powerful scene in which he is compelled to meet the stranger who tried to help him but was mugged as a reward for his decency.
A film full of heart, this is a hugely promising debut.
In select cinemas now.
