Kathryn Bigelow’s first film in eight years, A House of Dynamite (now on Netflix), is another in her string of white-knucklers, which began with 2008’s Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker, and continued with the similarly harrowing Zero Dark Thirty and Detroit. Dynamite springboards off Zero Dark’s political-thriller narrative, but instead of dramatizing true events, it executes a possible/probable/potential scenario with terrifying realism: What if a nuclear missile of unknown origin and aimed at the United States suddenly appears on the radar? Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim explore three different points-of-view on the drama, and each one will get your guts churning. A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? The Gist: Opening title cards bellow in large font that in recent history, global powers mutually agreed that having fewer nuclear weapons is in the best interest of the planet’s entire population. The missive concludes with an unsettling statement: THAT ERA IS NOW OVER. At a missile defense base in Fort Greely, Alaska, Major Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos) ends a tense personal phone call, then takes out his frustration by chewing out a co-worker who’s leaving Dorito crumbs all over his workspace. In Washington, D. C. Just another typical day, captured with jittery handheld cameras that remind us not to get comfortable because we’re watching a plausible real-life horror story. Sure enough, there’s a beep on the Fort Greely radar screen. It’s a nuclear missile. Where’d it originate? Nobody knows. Is it just a test, a flex by one of America’s adversaries? Russia or North Korea? Nobody knows that either until the declaration that the warhead’s “inclination is flattening” and headed toward the Midwest. Specifically, Chicago, where 10 million people live and might die when the missile hits in 19 minutes. The big indicator on the wall goes from DEFCON 4 to DEFCON 2. Gonzalez gets the go-ahead to launch two interceptor missiles. The first one malfunctions. The second one. misses. A countdown clock on the Situation Room wall shows a horrifying figure: SAFE ESCAPE TIME 0: 00: 00. Walker violates protocol to call her husband, who’s just leaving the doctor’s office with their son, and tells him to get in the car and drive: “Just go west.” She’s barely holding it together. Now we jump back in time a few ticks as General Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts) chats about last night’s ballgame on his way to a nuclear base in Nebraska. He plops into his seat in the command center, a bank of desks semi-circling a wall of screens. “Eight sugars, please,” he tells an inferior who’s about to fetch him coffee hope that’s a really big mug. His flippant, smirking tone gets serious as the intel on the incoming missile hits his ears. He’s one of the guys on the video call. Baerington gets Russian reps on the phone and during the call, lets slip that his wife is expecting. The defense missiles fail: “It’s like hitting a bullet with a bullet,” Baerington says. The President hops on the call, dropping F-bombs as they contemplate a counterattack. A stealth-fighter pilot (Kyle Allen) suits up and watches as his plane is armed with nuclear missiles. Jump back again. Just outside the Oval Office sits a man in Navy whites, Lieutenant Commander Robert Reeves (Jonah Hauer-King), a black case parked between his feet. He carries the case as he follows the POTUS (Idris Elba) everywhere, in this case, to a girl’s basketball camp hosted by Angel Reese. The Prez chats on the phone with the First Lady, on safari in Kenya, then shoots some hoops with the kids before the scene becomes his version of the infamous My Pet Goat moment. Reeves briefs him as they board a helicopter, and opens the “nuclear football.” Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Reid Baker (Jared Harris), finishes nine holes before getting to his Pentagon office just in time to try to wrap his head around the possibility of an apocalypse. “This is what $5 billion gets us?” he exclaims as the defense missiles miss. The clock ticktickticks down to impact on Chicago. “My daughter lives in Chicago,” Baker mutters. What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Oppenheimer and Cuban Missile Crisis docudrama Thirteen Days on the BOATS (Based On A True Story) end of things, Dr. Strangelove and Fail Safe on the fictional side. Performance Worth Watching: Three excellent performances for three chapters in the film: Letts nails the arrogant tone as an overconfident general. Harris barely contains his despair as a troubled and grieving man. And Ferguson draws us in with a characterization that’s quietly deep and emotional, and strategically situated at the beginning of the film to fully draw us in. Memorable Dialogue: The three scariest words in the film aren’t spoken, but on the cover of a black binder: NUCLEAR DECISION HANDBOOK. Sex and Skin: None. Our Take: This ain’t no Mission: Impossible. Ethan Hunt is not going to save the world today. He doesn’t exist in this reality our own or that of the movie, which aims to be as close to realistic as possible. Part of the suspense stems from whether the story will shift into pageturner pop-fiction mode or keep it harsh and real, and considering how far from Point Break Bigelow is in her career, we shouldn’t be surprised that the latter is true. Credit the director’s bracing, immediate style of filmmaking for rendering the drama so convincing. As studded as the cast is with actors of significant heft, the star here is Bigelow’s technical precision; she’s like a woodcarver taking an X-Acto knife to a skyscraper-sized figure and shaving tiny details into it. A House of Dynamite is structured like a triple-header, looping back to the beads-of-sweat-on-the-brow, run-outside-and-puke-on-the-lawn countdown to further explore the nuances of the story from numerous angles. Bigelow deepens the shade with an embarrassment-of-riches cast that includes notable names in bit parts: Greta Lee as an adviser on North Korea, Moses Ingram as a FEMA official, Malachi Beasley as Walker’s assistant, Brian Tee as a Secret Service agent, Kaitlyn Dever as Baker’s daughter. There’s additional smaller perspectives within the greater perspectives, lending more detail to the film’s significant procedural components, which are leavened by the emotional moments necessary to thaw the tone from freezing code to merely chilly. Because “chilling” sure seems to be the goal here. The primary performances further underscore our fear and paranoia by begging us to speculate as to whether anyone in this scenario is truly competent. Letts gives off brash, know-it-all energy that’s difficult to fully trust; Elba comes off as a panicky President who’s insecure in his ability to make impossible decisions, and shows signs of a cowardly streak; Ferguson plays a middle-management cog in an unbearable situational pincer-grip; Harris’ SOD is clearly in over his head; Basso’s deputy appears to be in over his head, although he may not be, not entirely anyway. Every character functions in a grey area of uncertainty, where they force themselves to think about the unthinkable and look to others to criticize or back their choices: Should the U. S. counterattack? Or sit tight and react calmly as Chicago gets incinerated? What if it’s an elaborate cyberattack or hoax? Sometimes warheads don’t detonate, right? Or, these characters look to pass the buck to someone further up the chain of command, someone pretending to be capable of cold analytical decisionmaking about “acceptable” casualties and other incomprehensibly nightmarish stuff. A House of Dynamite inevitably invites Hollywood-vs.-reality thinkpieces champing at the bit to point out how accurate the film is, but as it stands, it plays like highly plausible almost-nonfiction. Could this really happen? There’s no mention of Republicans and Democrats here, but we’re almost certainly bringing our political baggage to the table and contemplating if any of these characters resemble anyone in power in Washington, D. C. right now, and how they might react to this situation. Bigelow has shrewdly designed all this to squeeze us like stressballs until our eyes bulge. Is it a fun watch? Hell no. But it’s riveting as drama, and as a thought experiment, it gets our minds swimming like they’re caught in a current and being dragged out to sea. Eight sugars? No thanks. Eight shots of tequila is more like it. Our Call: A House of Dynamite is the most boilingest of any potboiler in recent memory. STREAM IT, but only if you have the intestinal fortitude. John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
https://decider.com/2025/10/24/a-house-of-dynamite-netflix-stream-it-or-skip-it/
Stream It Or Skip It: ‘A House of Dynamite’ on Netflix, Kathryn Bigelow’s Grueling What-if Nuclear-Attack Thriller
