A House of Dynamite
At Alaska's Fort Greely, Major Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos) leads a small group watching missile activity over the Pacific, the location housing interceptor missiles. In Washington D.C., Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) thinks she's arriving for just another day overseeing the White House Situation Room, but she and Admiral Mark Miller (Jason Clarke) will be witness to a life and death decision being argued by Nebraska's US Strategic Command's General Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts), Secretary of Defense Reid Baker ('Mad Men's' Jared Harris) and Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington (Gabriel Basso) when a member of Gonzalez's team realizes a missile of unknown origin launched over the Pacific will hit Chicago in less than twenty minutes. It is "A House of Dynamite."
Laura's Review: B+
Director Kathryn Bigelow has tackled dire military situations before in the fictional "The Hurt Locker" and factual "Zero Dark Thirty" as well as a potential nuclear meltdown in "K-19: The Widowmaker." Now, in her first film since 2017's "Detroit," the Oscar-winning director and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim ("Jackie") scare the pants off of us theorizing about just what might happen in a very plausible real world life or death scenario, the epitome of a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation. The film's only drawback is that it plays like a television movie with its constantly shifting focus from different institutional settings, homes, a Zoom meeting and monitoring screens.
In addition to its terrifying narrative, the film's structure is its big hook. With twenty minutes to react, Oppenheim shifts perspective, rewinding and making supporting players from prior scenes into focal characters. It isn't a "Rashomon" effect, where we get different interpretations of the same event, but a filling in of background from different angles. So, if Secretary Baker mumbles 'my daughter's in Chicago' when the target is announced on his Zoom call, we'll later witness him in his office on the call, then frantically trying to call Caroline (Kaitlyn Dever) and make arrangements for her safety, his focus personal rather than national.
In Fort Greely, we witness camaraderie and flirtation within Gonzalez's team, one soldier writing a 'have a nice day' note to a female officer, a message Bigelow will cheekily repeat on a D.C. digital bus banner. But things get serious quickly once one of the team realize that the missile they'd assumed was a Korean test has a very different trajectory, initial analysis placing its landing somewhere in the Midwest. Suddenly they find themselves launching interceptor missiles.
There is a similar arc in the Situation Room, SCPO William Davis (Malachi Beasley) being teased by his colleagues for having finally taken the plunge and proposing to his girlfriend. He'll be holding the hand of his tearful commanding officer, Walker, less than twenty minutes later. After it becomes clear that the intercept missile didn't work and Baker erupts with 'So it's a f'in coin toss?! That's what $50 billion buys us?,' Brady advises striking enemy targets in the event that this missile is the first of an organized attack. Meanwhile Baerington attempts to coordinate more information on a cell phone while heading towards the White House, patching in North Korean expert Ana Park (Greta Lee), surprised to be getting a work call while watching a Gettysburg reenactment with her young son, then horrified as to the reason why. After talking to the Russian Foreign Minister, he'll be forced to admit he has made no deal, even though the man appeared to believe his assurances.
Switching to the POTUS (Idris Elba) perspective, we see the president taken by his security detail to a girls' basketball event before suddenly being rushed off the court, much like George W. Bush reading to kids in a classroom on 9/11. Meanwhile FEMA's Cathy Rogers (Moses Ingram) is having a hard time believing the congressional evacuation orders she needs to conduct are real, only to later learn she's the department's designated nuclear evacuee. New White House secretary Abby Jansing (Willa Fitzgerald), advised earlier on her first day by Walker that her special breakfast request would hold up the line, looks around in confusion as armed troops rush outside the building. POTUS is loaded into a helicopter with Lieutenant Commander Robert Reeves (Jonah Hauer-King), who carries the nuclear football and advises POTUS on his three options, which he notes he's flippantly referred to in the past as rare, medium and well done. POTUS, struggling with the weight of the decision and lack of information, calls the First Lady (Renée Elise Goldsberry), away on safari in Africa.
The large ensemble all make their marks in various ways, Jared Hess and Rebecca Ferguson most poignantly conveying human tragedy while debate rages and the clock ticks down. Cinematographer Barry Ackroyd plunges us into a you-are-there docudrama, the rapidity of the editing (Kirk Baxter) escalating as time grows shorter. Volker Bertelmann's violin score climbs up and down the scale, deeply droning for emphasis. But it must be said - the most horrifying thing about "A House of Dynamite" is considering how many unqualified civilians currently hold the important positions weighing in on the unthinkable decision Bigelow dramatizes here. "A House of Dynamite" is a major wake-up call.
Robin's Review: B+
A ballistic missile launch is detected somewhere in the western Pacific Ocean and the highest levels of the US government scramble to find the aggressor. With just 18 minutes and 35 seconds to impact, there is little time to react in “A House of Dynamite.”
Kathryn Bigelow, with writer and president of NBC news Noah Oppenheim, brings us a tale that I can only compare to Sidney Lumet’s masterful Cold War drama, “Fail Safe (1964).” Here, though, technology and timeframe are on steroids. The older film, about an out of control flight of US nuclear bombers heading for Moscow, is hours of shear tension and growing terror.
Unfortunately for the participants in this modern day nuclear crisis, the timeframe to respond is mere minutes and the defenses put to use are almost totally untested. “It is like hitting a bullet with a bullet” one analyst declares about the effectiveness of our anti-ballistic missile defenses.
Bigelow and Oppenheim divide their story into three different viewpoints of the events rapidly unfolding in a kind of “Rashomon” telling. Each part is from the view of the players. Initially, it is the military and civilian experts called in to evaluate the crisis. The second, as the DEFCON level rises from 5 to 4 to 2 and then to one, is the hard scramble to figure out the perpetrator and how to stop disaster. The third part deals with saving the highest levels of government, especially the president, and the infrastructure response.
Because of the crisis, here, the escalated time from hours to minutes may cause some to think the story unsatisfying because of the abbreviated timeline. I think the opposite. Bigelow captures the uncertainty and confusion of all the players as they try to cope with a crisis as big as Pearl Harbor, if not bigger as here we have nuclear weapons, and lots of them, to contend with. And, they have to deal with it all in under 20 minutes.
This is a true ensemble story in every way as the players involved steadily increases in number as, first, the ICBM launch is detected and forces are mustered to stop the attack. Things escalate and more join the fray. The only problem is, who launched the missile? We do not learn who done it, only those that did not.
The concept of “A House of Dynamite” depicts what is really food for thought, especially in this brave new world where our “Secretary of War” calls for the “warrior ethos” in our military without fatties or beardos. That ethos goes against the fundamental foundation of our country – whatever happened to “Truth, Justice and the American Way”? Don’t answer, it is a rhetorical question.
Netflix releases "A House of Dynamite" in theaters on 10/10/25. It begins streaming on 10/24/25.
