A House of Dynamite director Kathryn Bigelow has made her name essentially directing two very different kinds of films. Genre pictures like Near Dark and Strange Days mark the first half of her career. These features push conventions to deliver some of the best examples of their categories. The latter half of her career veers in a wildly different direction. Boasting a near-documentary style, they focus nearly entirely on the machinations of war and world politics. These works—such as Zero Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker—scored critical and awards attention. Her latest, A House of Dynamite, is firmly lodged in the latter style of filmmaking.

Somewhere in the Pacific, an American early warning radar detects an ICBM in motion. The launch went undetected and the North Koreans has recently run missile tests fueling doubt about the threat. Unfortunately, it quickly becomes apparent that from its trajectory this the real deal. Further reports eventually peg its destination as Chicago. With no one taking credit for the launch and disaster imminent, America’s response apparatus has a mere 20 minutes to attempt to divert a nuclear strike and execute a response plan.

Sounds tense, right? And it is. At first.

The film’s most interesting structural choice also proves its undoing, unfurling those 20 minutes from three different perspectives. This kind of thing can and has worked in the past, from works as disparate as Go, Gone Girl, and 11:14, to rattle a trio from the past 30 years. But a big part of what makes them work is each perspective reveals something new—a different piece of the puzzle that alters your ideas about what is happening and has happened. Noah Oppenheim’s (somewhat fittingly named) script offers litter during these double-backs beyond putting faces to what were otherwise just voices on conference calls.

The moments it does—the President’s (Idris Elba) utterly benign morning schedule, Secretary of Defense Reid Baker’s (Jared Harris) conversation with his daughter (Kaitlyn Dever in basically a cameo) and his evacuation decision, and the resentment of FEMA Official Cathy Rogers’ (Moses Ingram) co-workers over her unexpected importance—don’t exactly rachet things up but at least provide some sense of color and stakes. They are too rare, though, which leaves the audience with a set of characters mostly defined as competent, anxious, and little else. Yes, the tremendous loss of life should be enough to compel viewers towards concern, but some real people on-screen would still help.

What A House of Dynamite does well is reveal how competence is barely a shield against the horrible force of nuclear war. While its heroes are certainly human with all the frailties therein, it is eminently clear they’re good at their jobs. Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson), Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington (Gabriel Basso), and General Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts) all convey that even if they seem over their heads, scared, or a little too conflict-hungry, they deserve their positions. Even the film’s weakest link, Elba’s President, doesn’t come across as a bad leader so much as a man shoved into a role the system reassured him over and over he’d never have to contend with.

It’s a brutally effective warning. The United States has wheels within wheels preparing for this, ready to protect us, but if even one part of it fails, the whole thing is imperiled. If Netflix hadn’t already used it for something, A House of Cards would be a perfect alternate title.

But something can be correct and an important warning and still not work as a piece of art. So it is, ultimately, with A House of Dynamite. Even with some wandering accent issues, the actors acquit themselves well. Bigelow and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd work the camera well, stifling the audience in the claustrophobia of the rooms of power.

Nonetheless, it does not work. Its triptych structure is an interesting but ultimately self-defeating choice. It may be insightful about the precarious nature of our nuclear existence, but nearly all of its heat comes from what the audience brings into the film to start. Viewers know enough to fear the vanishingly small chance of surviving a nuclear war, so that charges the proceedings. They can imagine the impossible choice of warning someone about their impending doom or simply letting them go about the next few minutes blessedly unaware. But the film only reflects these. It does nothing to cultivate or deepen them.

A House of Dynamite’s ending feels less like a bold echo of Fail Safe and more like a shrug. It renders the prior 110 minutes something akin to an in-class essay where the student ran out of time. Faced with a choice between a proper ending and shoving in one more beat, it chooses the latter to the movie’s detriment. Much like the film’s characters, it is as though when faced with what it’s been preparing for, it realizes there is simply nothing it can do to save itself.

A House of Dynamite has a podcast it really wants to tell you about on Netflix now.

A House of Dynamite Trailer: