I have an unhealthy affection for films where the primary action consists of great actors delivering great dialogue in various rooms. When done poorly, these can feel stagey and inert, but when done right — as Kathryn Bigelow demonstrates emphatically in her first feature in eight years — they can be absolutely riveting. A House of Dynamite depicts a nuclear crisis managed by career officials and subject matter experts, the absolute best of the best making split-second decisions with millions of lives hanging in the balance. That this scenario practically reads as science fiction in the year 2025 makes Bigelow’s film exponentially more unnerving.
A missile of unknown origin launches somewhere in the Pacific, headed for the continental United States. The military has roughly 20 minutes to identify the threat, neutralize it if possible, and advise the President on how to respond. What follows is an exercise in sustained tension that had my Apple Watch registering an elevated heart rate for nearly the entire two-hour runtime — make of that what you will.
Bigelow, returning to similar material that earned her an Oscar for The Hurt Locker and brought her damn close with Zero Dark Thirty, appears to have lost none of her command over this particular brand of political thriller. Working from a script by Noah Oppenheim, she drops us directly into the machinery of crisis response with virtually no hand-holding. The film plays out across three separate segments, each covering that same crucial 20-minute window but from different vantage points within the chain of command. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Kurosawa’s Rashomon, except the events and perceptions remain consistent — we’re simply filling in more details and understanding more stakes with each repetition.
That structural gambit could easily have felt gimmicky or repetitive, but Bigelow uses the repetition to reveal how differently this crisis looks depending on where you sit. The missile defense crews see it as a technical problem to solve, scrambling to launch interceptors while the Situation Room officers coordinate intelligence. The military brass see it as a strategic puzzle, weighing retaliation strategies and geopolitical consequences. The President sees it as a moral nightmare with no good outcomes. Each time through those 20 minutes, we understand more about the machinery of decision-making and how little any single perspective captures the full horror of what’s unfolding, deepening our understanding of just how many crucial choices must be made without the benefit of time or complete information.
The ensemble assembled here is stacked with heavyweight performers, every single one showing up with their A-game. Idris Elba doesn’t even appear on camera until nearly two-thirds through the film — he’s heard over phone lines and video feeds, but not seen — yet even without his physical presence, there’s so much happening in his delivery, so much weight and doubt and reluctant authority in nearly every line. His President second-guesses himself, openly shares his doubts with advisors, and wrestles visibly with choices no amount of briefings could prepare him for.
Tracy Letts cuts an unsettling figure as General Anthony Brady, the head of STRATCOM whose immediate instinct is aggressive retaliation, even with limited facts. It’s the kind of swaggering macho bullshit that leads to catastrophic decision-making all in the name of looking tough, and Letts plays it with a matter-of-factness that’s somehow even more chilling than if he were frothing at the mouth. When the President snaps “This is insanity,” Letts responds curtly: “No sir. It’s reality.”
Jared Harris, as Secretary of Defense Reid Baker, delivers a performance that becomes more gut-wrenching with each repetition of the timeline. Details about his personal life emerge gradually, and Harris plays each scene with the kind of contained anguish that makes you want to look away. Rebecca Ferguson anchors much of the first section as a Situation Room duty officer, tasked with providing clear-headed coordination amid mounting chaos, while Gabriel Basso’s Deputy National Security Advisor makes a desperate phone call to a foreign adversary that stands as one of the film’s most effective illustrations of someone clinging to the last shred of hope. “If we get this wrong,” he declares solemnly, “none of us will be alive tomorrow.”
Even in smaller roles, the cast makes vivid impressions. Greta Lee appears briefly as a North Korea analyst pulled away from a day off watching a Civil War reenactment with her son, and she manages to be far more impactful here in limited screentime than she was as a main player in Tron: Ares (also releasing this week). These tiny, human moments are littered throughout the film, little grace notes that remind us these aren’t automatons executing procedures, but actual people with families and fears and weekend plans that may never come to pass.
Bigelow shoots with the same documentary-style approach that carried her previous political and military thrillers to success, and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd’s handheld camera creates a sense of being embedded within these crisis centers. Given how many moving parts there are to this story, how many different perspectives and voices are involved, the editing by Kirk Baxter maintains complete coherence amidst the controlled chaos. You’re never confused about where you are or what’s happening, even as the film juggles multiple locations and an ever-expanding roster of personnel; it’s damn near miraculous.
That Bigelow chose to structure the narrative this way, forcing audiences to watch the same 20 minutes of crisis unfold three separate times, speaks to one of the film’s most sobering themes. “We did every fucking thing right,” one character laments after a critical failure, and it’s perhaps the most chilling line in a movie full of them. A House of Dynamite isn’t interested in depicting a crisis caused by incompetence or negligence. Everyone here has made careers, if not lifetimes, out of preparing for exactly this scenario. They’re following established protocols, making decisions based on the best available intelligence, and doing everything by the book. And it still might not be enough.
I can’t even begin to imagine the sort of burden that comes with being faced with the decisions depicted in this film, particularly during that final stretch where the camera stays locked on Elba’s President as those last few minutes tick away. But I’m grateful that Bigelow has returned to remind us that these aren’t hypothetical scenarios confined to thriller fiction — they’re choices that real people in real rooms might have to make at any moment, with the future of millions hanging on whether they get it right. And as A House of Dynamite makes devastatingly clear, flawless execution is no guarantee of success.
The film forces us to reckon with the fragility of the systems we’ve built to prevent nuclear annihilation, and how much of our continued existence depends on a series of coin flips dressed up as strategic planning. The screenplay, heavy with military jargon and cascading acronyms, doesn’t always pause to explain itself. Bigelow uses onscreen text to define some terms, but there’s an assumption of baseline familiarity with government bureaucracy and chain-of-command structures that could prove alienating for some viewers. Whether you consider this a feature or a bug likely depends on your tolerance for being dropped into the deep end, though I’m inclined to argue the occasional confusion only enhances the sense of being overwhelmed by forces beyond our control.
What makes A House of Dynamite feel so urgently relevant, beyond Bigelow’s impeccable craft, is the uncomfortable question it poses about the present moment. The film depicts capable professionals navigating an unprecedented crisis, people who understand the gravity of their decisions and the catastrophic consequences of getting it wrong. Now contrast that with the current situation in the United States, where many of these sort of career officials and subject matter experts have been systematically pushed out, replaced by political appointees and yes-men sorely lacking the proficiency and competence to navigate these waters. Suddenly Bigelow’s nightmare scenario doesn’t read as an unlikely worst-case — it reads as a dress rehearsal.