Movie Review: A House Of Dynamite (2025)

Genre: Thriller  

Director: Kathryn Bigelow  

Starring: Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Jason Clarke  

Running Time: 112 minutes  

Synopsis: An intercontinental ballistic missile is spotted heading towards the United States. Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) leads the response in the White House Situation Room, and the missile's target is identified as Chicago. From Alaska's Fort Greely, interceptor missiles are fired, while the President (Idris Elba) and the Secretary of Defence (Jared Harris) consider their options. Advice is provided by Deputy National Security Advisor Baerington (Gabriel Basso), who urges restraint, and General Brady (Tracy Letts), who argues for an overwhelming response.

What Works Well: The film repeats the same events from three different perspectives: the first focused on the Situation Room, the second on General Brady and Advisor Baerington, and the third accompanying the President. The construction is interesting and promotes a fill-in-the-gaps narrative, marginal characters in one run-through emerging as key players in the next. The production values are excellent, and the escalating tension of a potentially catastrophic situation carries Fail-Safe echoes and builds undeniable momentum.

What Does Not Work As Well: While the attempts to humanize imperfect characters are appreciated, there are too many of them to matter, and ultimately an inordinate amount of time is wasted on trinkety personal details. Some segments, including the chaotic reactions at FEMA, simply don't work. The Noah Oppenheim script is only interested in the US perspective of a global crisis, purposefully allowing fundamental questions (who, why) to float by answered in service of here-and-now urgency. The unsettling ending can be justified within the definition of the portrayed events, but is nevertheless deeply unsatisfactory.

Key Quote:

General Brady: We've already lost one American city, sir. How many more do you want to risk?

The President: What kind of fucking question is that? That's insanity, okay?

General Brady: No, Mister President. That's reality.

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Movie Review: Heads Of State (2025)

Genre: Action Comedy  

Director: Ilya Naishuller  

Starring: Idris Elba, John Cena, Priyanka Chopra, Carla Gugino, Jack Quaid, Stephen Root, Paddy Considine  

Running Time: 113 minutes  

Synopsis: Although they don't like each other, US President Will Derringer (John Cena) and UK Prime Minister Sam Clarke (Idris Elba) are together on-board Air Force One when the plane is attacked by agents working for fugitive arms dealer Gradov (Paddy Considine). Derringer and Clarke parachute into Belarus and make their way to a safe house in Poland, where they receive help from CIA Agent Marty Comer (Jack Quaid) and MI6 Agent Noel Bisset (Priyanka Chopra). Bisset has to escort Derringer and Clarke to Trieste, Italy, where Gradov and his accomplices are orchestrating the collapse of NATO.

What Works Well: Following on the heels of the similarly-themed but much worse G20, Heads Of State succeeds by celebrating the absurdity of its premise. The tension between the two protagonists establishes classic buddy movie dynamics: Derringer is a Schwarzenegger-type action movie star turned politician, Clarke is an idealistic social justice warrior actually believing he's in politics to help people. It takes a while for them to overcome their differences, but of course they both end up kicking butt, wielding weapons, and blowing away bad guys. The special effects are above-average, the next well-staged action set-piece is never more than 10 minutes away, and the trio of Priyanka Chopra, Jack Quaid, and Paddy Considine add memorable support.

What Does Not Work As Well: The evil mastermind is eyerollingly predictable (as the script itself acknowledges), and the  hold-NATO-together imperative is never treated as anything other than superficial politicizing.

Key Quote:

Derringer: Dear, God!

Clarke: I think He's had the day off.

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Movie Review: Three Thousand Years Of Longing (2022)

Genre: Fantasy Drama Romance

Director: George Miller

Starring: Tilda Swinton, Idris Elba

Running Time: 108 minutes

Synopsis: On a trip to Istanbul, lonely British literary scholar Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton) suffers from hallucinations and blackouts. In the backroom of a market store she finds an ancient bottle, and back at her hotel room releases a Djinn (Idris Elba). He grants her three wishes, but she is aware of the pitfalls and careful about what she wants to wish for. To stimulate her imagination the Djinn recounts stories of his past loves from thousands of years past.

What Works Well: Director George Miller enlivens a two-person whimsical drama with a gorgeous visual style, the inventive cinematography playfully celebrating adult fairytales. Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba do their best with the intellectually and spatially confined material.

What Does Not Work As Well: The adaptation of mythical short stories is unsurprisingly choppy, the pacing is slow, and the narrative pathway ultimately tortuous, all to arrive at two trite conclusions: love cannot be forced, and be careful what you wish for. Along the way, the structure surrenders to meandering fragments in desperate search of a unifying soul. 

Conclusion: This Djinn should have stayed in the bottle.



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Movie Review: Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom (2013)

A biographical epic of South Africa's revolutionary leader and ultimately President Nelson Mandela, Long Walk To Freedom is a warts-and-all recounting of a remarkable life.

The film chronicles key events experienced and shaped by Mandela (Idris Elba). Starting as an impassioned lawyer in the 1940s, he is spotted by leaders of the African National Congress fighting against the apartheid regime. Initially not interested, the introduction of additional laws to increase racial segregation followed by a massacre of innocent civilians in a black township turn Mandela towards activism, and he becomes a prominent ANC campaigner.

Mandela's frequent absence from home and womaning break apart his first marriage, and he soon falls in love with Winnie (Naomie Harris) who becomes his second wife. By the early 1960s the regime is increasingly brutal, and the ANC resorts to a campaign of violence. Mandela goes underground, but is eventually captured, tried and sentenced along with his key associates to life in prison on Robben Island.

Winnie remains active and is herself incarcerated and separated from her young children, and she becomes increasingly militant in her hatred of the regime. By the 1970s, an international movement to free Mandela starts to gain momentum, while South Africa is stifled by economic sanctions and starts to experience wide-scale street violence and economic misery.

Long Walk To Freedom best resembles Gandhi, with all the praise and pitfalls built into the comparison. Mandela's story is an earnest 146 minutes tracing the South African leader's transformation from idealistic but skirt-chasing lawyer to unifying and peace-promoting President, passing through 27 years of incarceration.

But in both form and construct, Long Walk To Freedom could have been made in 1982, and the storytelling stodginess that used to pass as epic is less tolerable more than 30 years later. Director Justin Chadwick magnificently recreates South Africa of the 1940s, and the dusty tension between the white ruling class and the majority coloured population creates electricity in most scenes. But otherwise the William Nicholson script, adapting Mandela's autobiography, is unable to elevate the material much beyond conventional biopic standards.

The middle act featuring life-in-prison for Mandela and his key ANC associates is particularly flat. Chadwick and Nicholson fail to capture any meaningful milestone moments, and the film becomes choppy, shifting to wife Winnie's struggles and militarization but without fully investing in her story.

The loss of momentum is key, as the final flourish is both undermined and prolonged. As the international movement to free Mandela gains momentum he is moved to more tolerable house arrest conditions. Power-sharing negotiations start with the ruling party, but the foundations for Mandela's defining principles guiding the talks are sketched-in at best.

However, the strength of the film resides in the subject matter, and Chadwick avoids any hints of a hagiography. With Idris Elba in robust form and benefiting from good make-up work supported by Naomie Harris transitioning from seductress to strong-headed leader, Long Walk To Freedom paints a vivid picture of a couple who changed a nation. Their relationship falls into the crevasse of forced separation and they are imperfect as individuals. But altering the course of history is rarely, if ever, perfect.

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Movie Review: Obsessed (2009)

A stalking thriller, Obsessed recycles tired material with obsolete formulation.

In Los Angeles, successful financial executive Derek Charles (Idris Elba), his wife Sharon (Beyoncé) and young child move into a grand new house. At work, new temp Lisa (Ali Larter) immediately sets her eyes on Derek. He is friendly but not interested in an affair.

But Lisa is obsessed, and makes aggressive sexual moves targeting Charles at the Christmas office party, in the office parkade, and finally at an office retreat. A nasty incident results in the police getting involved in the form of Detective Monica Reese (Christine Lahti), and Charles' marriage to Sharon reaches a breaking point. But Lisa is just getting started.

Stomping over well-worn ground covered in much better movies like Play Misty For Me, Fatal Attraction and Disclosure, Obsessed brings nothing new to the story of a psychologically disturbed woman going after her target man. The David Loughery script could have been written in the 1980s, and director Steve Shill translates it to the screen with all the style and sophistication of a cheap television movie-of-the-week.

Other than Sharon's history as Derek's previous assistant, the characters in Obsessed are devoid of context and background. Lisa's disturbed psychology and predatory sexual tendencies just drop on Derek and no one bothers to investigate her history once she unleashes her venom. Derek makes every wrong choice at every available opportunity, including exposing himself to Lisa's blatant attacks, failing to communicate with Sharon, and most obviously not reporting Lisa's behaviour to the office human resources department.

Idris Elba, Beyoncé and Ali Larter go through the motions with sombre stiffness, soundly defeated by the crayon-level character definitions. Beyoncé gets to spout lines like "Nobody touches my child!" and "You think you're crazy? I'll show you crazy!" before the predictable final violent showdown, plenty of broken furniture joining all the rest of the artistic wreckage on display.

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Movie Review: Beasts Of No Nation (2015)

A heartbreaking war drama, Beasts Of No Nation is the story of a child who becomes a soldier amidst the savage disintegration of his country.

In an unnamed African nation (with Sierra Leone probably serving as the closest inspiration), a civil war is raging with multiple rival militias vying for power and peacekeeping forces caught in the middle. Agu (Abraham Attah) is a resourceful young boy living with his family in a designated buffer zone, but merciless combatants eventually arrive at his village. His mother and younger sister are bundled off to the relative safety of the capital, and Agu is soon separated from his father and older brother.

In the jungle he is captured by a scrappy battalion of rebel fighters under the leadership of the Commandant (Idris Elba). Gradually Agu gets to know the other fighters, including 2-IC, Strika, Preacher, and Tripod. Exposed to the Commandant's rhetoric and abuse, Agu graduates from ammunition carrier to child soldier, participating in battles and fuelled by drugs. The rebels appear to make progress towards victory, but the Commandant has ambitions of his own.

An adaptation of the 2005 novel by Uzodinma Iweala, Beasts Of No Nation also bears a striking resemblance to the true story chronicled in Ishmael Beah's 2007 autobiography A Long Way Gone. The film was one of Netflix's earliest critical hits, and helped launch the debate on appropriate distribution channels for worthwhile films.

The plight of children in war-torn countries is bad enough. Methodically turning boys into murderous drug-dependent soldiers subjected to physical, emotional and sexual abuse is nothing short of horrifying. Beasts Of No Nation is never less than compelling, but also an undoubtedly challenging film to watch. The scenes of violence often convey barbaric cruelty, and plenty of blood is spilled on screen, stopping just short of excess.

Director Cary Joji Fukunaga also wrote the script, and invests the necessary time in the first act to bring Agu to life as a fun-loving and enterprising kid, surrounded by family and friends. Because he is well-rounded into his own person, his subsequent descent into a soldier on the ugly battlefields of a chaotic civil war becomes all the more harrowing.

The other main character is the Commandant, and Idris Elba brings to life a chilling military man totally invested in the world of war, adept at saying just the right thing at the right time to inspire, indoctrinate, gain respect and demand obedience from the men and boys in his battalion. Elba's larger than life performance remarkably ensures he is also human, and Fukunaga crafts a scene of mad battlefield brilliance featuring the Commandant inspiring his troops into a difficult battle to seize a bridge.

In dirty civil wars there are no winners, just various categories of losers, victims and survivors. All are devoured immediately or over time by the insatiable internal and external beasts that thrive on conflict.

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Movie Review: Molly's Game (2017)

A biography set in the glitzy world of private high stakes poker games, Molly's Game is a remarkable story of a woman navigating her way through money-drenched terrain where celebrities and less savory characters intermingle.

Two years after hosting her last poker game and soon after publishing a book about her unlikely experiences, Molly Brown (Jessica Chastain) is arrested by the FBI for operating illegal gambling tables. She seeks the services of lawyer Charlie Jaffey (Idris Elba), and as she tangles with the legal system her story unfolds in flashback. Born in Colorado and driven hard by her psychologist father Larry (Kevin Costner), Molly was striving for the US Olympic skiing team when a severe crash ended her hopes.

She moved to Los Angeles and through her new employer Dean (Jeremy Strong), a real estate developer, she gets involved in hosting poker games for Hollywood's elites, including a famous actor referred to only as Player X (Michael Cera). Molly learns all she can and gradually establishes a name for herself, keeping the games clean and legal. Eventually she breaks away from Dean and creates her own brand. But a squabble with Player X ends badly, forcing Molly to relocate to New York and start over, this time with higher stakes both at the table and in her private life.

Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, Molly's Game is a fast-paced trip fuelled on ambition. The film is immersed in the decadent and ultimately barely consequential milieu of wealthy people trading fortunes at the poker table. But Sorkin latches onto the theme of a desire to achieve ignited by broken dreams, and weaves an intriguing narrative around a woman carving her place in a secretive male-dominated world.

Despite the preponderance of players, lawyers, agents and mobsters, Molly Bloom is the one well-rounded character worth caring about in the film. Sorkin draws out plenty of background from her childhood, particularly a difficult relationship with her father who is also a coach, booster and expert on mind games. And within her family Molly struggled to meet expectations, developing a sense of bratty insecurity among high achieving siblings. Molly's accident on the ski hill frames the film, and becomes the catalyst for a woman determined to climb to the top step of whatever podium is available.

At 140 minutes, the film is a good 30 minutes longer than it needed to be for a relatively small story. In his big screen directorial debut Sorkin allows plenty of flab to creep in. Scenes routinely go on longer than they need to, some details about individual poker hands intrude on the narrative, and the editing is lazy. But the dialogue is often crisp, and Molly finds a worthwhile sparring partner in lawyer Charlie Jaffey. His role grows as the film progresses, the lawyer finally figuring out what makes his client tick and placing it into context.

Jessica Chastain dominates the film and brings Molly to life with plenty of energy and occasional hints of vulnerability and loneliness. Idris Elba and Kevin Costner provide steady support. The men around the table, including Player X (allegedly modeled on Tobey Maguire) remain relatively featureless examples of card players succumbing to base masculine competitive instincts and wasting away money, talent, time or all three.

And where men with too much money and power are addicted to foolish pursuits, a smart woman can find her place to shine.

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Movie Review: The Mountain Between Us (2017)

A survival adventure, The Mountain Between Us is a two-person character study that intermittently connects but also drags on for too long.

Photojournalist Alex Martin (Kate Winslet), traveling to her wedding, is stranded at an airport when her flight is cancelled due to an incoming storm. She spots fellow traveler Dr. Ben Bass (Idris Elba) on his way to perform a surgery and equally frustrated by the delays. Alex and Ben team up to charter a small plane from grizzled and dishevelled Vietnam War veteran Walter (Beau Bridges) and his dog.

Walter does not file a flight plan, and during the flight suffers a stroke. The plane crashes in the remote snow-covered mountains in a Utah wilderness area. Ben, Alex and the dog survive, although Alex suffers a broken leg. They shelter for days in the half-destroyed plane cabin against the bitter cold, but help does not arrive. With food running out, and against Ben's wishes, Alex insists that they need to leave the crash site and start descending the mountain to reach help.

Directed by Hany Abu-Assad as an adaptation of the Charles Martin novel, The Mountain Between Us is a chilling drama about surviving the elements and unanticipated closeness with a stranger. The hip-deep snow, unimaginable cold, blinding storms, injuries, wild animals and isolated mountains provide plenty of physical challenges for Ben and Alex to overcome. And Abu-Assad doesn't hide from some awkward details: how does a woman with a broken leg urinate in a cramped cabin with a strange man for company?

But of more interest is the connection that needs to be forged between two travelers with nothing in common, and indeed plenty of rub points. Alex is talkative, inquisitive and a risk-taker. With her chase-the-story instincts, she is unable to sit still and await rescue, despite a broken leg. Ben is quiet, reserved, cerebral and slow to share anything intimate about himself. Applying the methodical logic of a surgeon, he finds Alex's impulsiveness grating.

The fact that Alex instigated the ill-fated charter adds to the strain between them. The journey from frigid distance to the warmth of dependency underpins the film, and of course their contrasting character traits will need to merge in the name of survival.

Abu-Assad gets the most out of the story, but at 112 minutes, there is more film than plot. There are only so many arguments and encounters with near death that two people can carry, and by the time a bear trap snaps, an inevitable tired sense of "what else" creeps into the film. The denouement back in civilization also drags out longer than needed.

Kate Winslet and Idris Elba easily maintain watchability, the two stars enjoying several emotional highlights. Winslet gives Alex a stubborn vivaciousness, while Elba allows the cover of calm silence to regularly lift and reveal hidden pain and frustrations within. Beau Bridges as the pilot and Dermot Mulroney as Alex's husband-in-waiting get a few scenes, but the real co-star is the dog, who provides essential companionship without undue cutesiness.

The Mountain Between Us is worth traversing, but it is a bit of a trudge.

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The Movies Of Idris Elba

All movies starring Idris Elba and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

American Gangster (2007)

Obsessed (2009)

The Losers (2010)

Prometheus (2012)

Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom (2013)

The Gunman (2015)

Beasts Of No Nation (2015)

The Mountain Between Us (2017)

Molly's Game (2017)

Three Thousand Years Of Yearning (2022)

Extraction 2 (2023)

Heads Of State (2025)

A House Of Dynamite (2025)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Prometheus (2012)

A deep-space science fiction horror adventure, Prometheus builds up towards some tense moments with a space crew searching for superior alien beings who may have created humanity. But despite a glossy production, the film's lofty themes are not matched by shoddy characterizations and perfunctory expositions.

In the year 2089, scientists and lovers Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) discover ancient caves in Scotland denoting alien shapes and a star map. The imagery matches others found throughout the world, leading Shaw and Holloway to conclude that aliens, dubbed The Engineers, created humankind. Aging billionaire tycoon Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), seeking the secret to eternal life, is enthralled enough to fund an expedition to make contact with humanity's creators.

By 2093, the Weyland-funded spaceship Prometheus arrives near the destination planet. Shaw and Holloway lead the scientific expedition and are accompanied by a motley crew of other experts and explorers. The icy cold Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) commands the mission with authoritative zeal, and the vessel is captained by the more laid back Janek (Idris Elba). The robot-in-charge is David (Michael Fassbender), and he keeps the ship functioning until the crew awakens. They land and start to explore the planet's surface, finding dome-shaped installations seemingly built by the Engineers. But there are also signs that the Engineers themselves ran into trouble, and the Prometheus crew is soon threatened by internal strife as well as a horrific external menace.

Directed by Ridley Scott, Prometheus is a prequel-of-sorts to Alien, but with a more philosophical focus. The film never quite decides what it wants to be, and ends up as an uneven mishmash of origins-of-life philosophy, creature-versus-human battles for survival, and petty human conflicts. The aesthetics are gorgeous on the alien planet surface, and there are moments of effective and yucky-gooey horror, but the film is sold short by a script that truncates thoughtfulness in a rush to create conflict.

The film introduces concepts related to no less than the creation of humanity and the relationship between the creator and the created. But lacking proper courage to delve into its own themes, the conversation is limited to ancient scrawls on cave walls, and a few dialogue exchanges that barely go beyond the superficial. The extent of explaining the entire thesis behind a superior race creating humanity resides with interpretations of ancient carvings, a quite dubious premise on which to launch a trillion dollar expedition.

Instead of exploring big ideas with conviction, the script (by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof) hurriedly seeks villains with an agenda, and populates the crew with excitable and cursory characters lacking in depth and context rushing to betray one another and unleash predictable surprises.

The year may be 2093, but scientific rigour and on-board procedures have taken many steps backwards. The Prometheus crew is made up of unconvincing scientists, technicians and assorted victims-to-be. Discipline is the first casualty even before any threats appear, and the slipshod trampling over dangerous artifacts and mishandling of potentially deadly foreign matter denotes a script rushing to set-pieces and leaving large plot holes in its wake. And when they arrive, many of the highlights appear to mimic the better moments from Alien.

Shaw gets a sketched-in background story, and Noomi Rapace is effective as the most empathetic of the characters, often holding the film together. She also enjoys the most memorable moment, an impromptu self-administered emergency surgery. Michael Fassbender is also good as David the robot-in-human-form, but his secretive machinations are derivative and occasionally cross the line into ludicrous mad-scientist villainy.

Prometheus is one third interesting science, one third questionable ideology, and one third character interaction balderdash.

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