John Powers
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
And he gives us an indelible portrait of a man who, for all his uncommon self-devouring brilliance, is driven by feelings that are all too human.
Larry is lonely and frightened and looking for love.
just like the rest of us.
If you were born after Hiroshima, you've spent your whole life seeing, or at least knowing of, movies about the atomic bomb.
From the ruthless 60s satire Dr. Strangelove, to the 80s TV sensation The Day After, to 21st century thrillers like The Sum of All Fears, filmmakers keep imagining the ways that nuclear weapons can lead to cataclysm.
The latest to do so is A House of Dynamite, a white-knuckle Netflix movie that opens first in cinemas and hits the streamer itself on October 24th.
I encourage you to see it in a theater, because it's directed by Catherine Bigelow, who's not merely the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar.
Although I normally try to avoid clichés, A House of Dynamite literally did have me on the edge of my seat.
The action begins when a military tracking station spots a single nuclear warhead, origin unknown, heading toward the U.S.
For the rest of the movie, we leapfrog among the characters who are trying to stop that missile, figure out who launched it, Putin, Iran, North Korea, China pretending to be North Korea, and to come up with a response that won't lead to Armageddon.
If the premise is straightforward, the telling is not.
The film loops back and repeats the same 20-minute period three times over, as we watch different people confront the threat.
In the first, which is about trying to stop the ICBM, we flip between a major and an Alaska missile outpost, that's Anthony Ramos, and the military officer running the White House Situation Room.
She's played by Rebecca Ferguson, who you'll know from Mission Impossible.
The second part centers on two tacticians, a deputy national security advisor played by Gabriel Basso, who's urging a cautious response, and the general played by Tracy Lentz, who fears that caution could lead to America's destruction.
Finally, the third part centers on the Secretary of Defense, played by Jared Harris, and President Idris Elba.
He's presented with a menu featuring different levels of retaliatory slaughter, and has the agonizing task of deciding who, if anyone, to nuke.