A House of Dynamite review: A realistic nuclear war is turned into a cheesy disaster flick

Running time: 112 minutes.Rated R (language).

On Netflix Oct.24.Two ominous notes of music repeat at the beginning of “A House of Dynamite,” sounding like the score from “Jaws.”Only this time the killer shark is a nuke.

And it’s only 19 minutes away from an unsuspecting United States.The “you’re all going to die!” alarm from “Hurt Locker” and “Zero Dark Thirty” director Kathryn Bigelow is the king of all downers.Its deflating take is that America is woefully unprepared for a potential nuclear war at a precarious time in the world, and we’re sitting ducks less than a half-hour from imminent, unprovoked annihilation.“Dynamite” is an overcooked casserole of lofty “ifs”.What happens if essential equipment malfunctions? What if, at our most perilous crossroads, our nation’s leaders mute their strategic Zoom calls to instead phone their wives and kids? What if our top analysts have the day off? What if nobody has a clue what they’re doing?That’s all plausible.However, when you give a realistic scenario the aesthetic of a 20-year-old network TV show and a script that’s just “Armageddon” in glasses, its veneer of importance falls off.The video-gamey dialogue often had me giggling, with its hackneyed attempts to quickly establish 20 characters we’ll otherwise learn nothing about.“He says the prenup is ironclad!” yells frantic Cathy from FEMA (Moses Ingram) on the phone.“Did you see the ballgame last night?” asks Tracy Letts’ Strategic Command General Brady as though he’s kicking off an improv scene at Upright Citizens Brigade.It’s hard to imagine any president — fictional or otherwise — uttering “I listened to this podcast …” just two minutes before the complete eradication of a major American city.Lax details like that strain credulity of a movie that fancies itself a giant blinking warning sign of what’s to come.Sure I felt existential dread from start to finish.

Bigelow succeeds there.I also fe...