Acclaimed director Kathryn Bigelow is back, eight years after the underrated riot drama Detroit. It’s wonderful to see a director of such talent return to the screen in a genre she has excelled in throughout her illustrious career. It is a real shame, then, that A House of Dynamite weaves a narrative structured in a way that is ultimately exhausting and repetitive, ruining much of the tension that Bigelow expertly builds through the electrifying first act.

A House of Dynamite recounts the story of a nuclear missile heading towards Chicago from an unknown source, and the efforts of those responsible for stopping it and planning retaliation. In the White House Situation Room, Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) manages the emergency; in the Strategic Command office, General Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts) seeks to persuade the President (Idris Elba) about options for retaliation; and at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defence Reid Baker (Jared Harris) is concerned about his daughter, who lives in Chicago. All these key figures connect via call, discussing options as the countdown to impact approaches.

The narrative covers these crucial 20 minutes from discovery to impact across three acts, presenting a variety of viewpoints and often rehashing the same points discussed on a call but from various perspectives. This creates an engaging first act where the audience learns everything for the first time, feeling terrified that this could happen and wondering how the characters will resolve or prevent the world’s end. We then move into acts two and three, which want us to feel all these feelings again, but from another character’s perspective on this call. This undermines any semblance of tension or energy that the film painstakingly creates in that initial first act. It becomes a frustrating film to watch, especially since the third act is the least well-written of the three.

Ferguson is the standout performer here, and a whole film from her perspective would have been much more enjoyable. She exhibits a level of assurance and confidence, but beneath this lies concern for her family, alongside anxiety for her country. Captain Walker utilises all of Ferguson’s strengths as an actor; with her stern face and confident voice, she is exactly what this film needed to ramp up that first-act tension. Letts is also excellent as the calm and collected General who knows exactly what to do in a situation he has trained his entire life for. He gives the President the precise advice you would expect a General to give: attack, attack, attack, whilst Deputy NSA Advisor Jake Baerington (Gabriel Basso) is the voice of reason, urging the President to exercise caution. Both characters feel very authentic to what you would imagine the real person in that role would do.

A major flaw of this film is its time setting. A House of Dynamite feels ultimately like an Obama-era film, with its depiction of leadership and character interactions. Elba plays a President who is cautious, enjoys playing basketball with children, treats his staff with respect, and loves his wife deeply. He is no more than 50 years old and possesses that charm in his voice that Elba can never lose. The problem is that this does not reflect the reality of the world we currently live in—post-Trump, where caution is often ignored, facts are dismissed, and leaders are unprepared for crises. If a nuclear missile were headed for Chicago now, the President wouldn’t hesitate or heed advice from the Russian minister; he would have an arsenal of nuclear weapons ready long before impact. The film strives to be timely and depict modern nuclear warfare, but the President they portray feels outdated and out of place in today’s world, making a modern setting seem unrealistic and misplaced.

Bigelow is an incredibly assured director, as these scenes all flow smoothly together with expert editing from Oscar-winning editor Kirk Baxter. The documentary-style cinematography by frequent collaborator Barry Ackroyd effectively immerses you in those rooms, making you feel just as terrified as the professionals are. One notable point about the cinematography is that, for better or worse, it reminded me a lot of the way Succession is shot, although the film does not use it in the same manner. Composer Volker Bertelmann crafts an almost identical version of his brilliant score from last year’s Conclave, and despite that seeming lazy, the music is remarkably effective at heightening the tension exactly when it is needed.

Despite the repetitive script and the misplaced hope that a President may or may not do the right thing, Bigelow crafts a genuinely gripping drama that feels like one of the nihilistic Cold War films from the past. A little more Rebecca Ferguson and a bit less repetition, and this could have been among Bigelow’s best.