A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE - Mark Reviews Movies

A House of Dynamite, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 9, 2025

One assumes screenwriter Noah Oppenheim did his homework for A House of Dynamite, in which a nuclear missile is fired from somewhere in the world at the United States. The screenplay, after all, follows a very specific process and course of events, as various government agencies and military operations attempt to trace the origin of the missile, determine its path, and put an end to both the immediate threat and whatever might follow it. "There's a plan for that?" one character asks of what seems a very particular and almost-absurd little detail, and the whole film keeps us asking that question and realizing that, obviously, there must be.

There's a flip side to these minutiae, too, in that one kind of hopes Oppenheim and director Kathryn Bigelow haven't uncovered everything about this extensive scheme. This is not an optimistic film. Indeed, it's one in which everything that could go wrong more or less does from the start of this crisis. Some of the failures are technological, because no amount of money thrown at some high-tech countermeasure is going to pay off with an absolute guarantee of success.

Many of them are human, however, and those are, perhaps, the most frightening ones on display here. We're not talking about shortcomings of character, competence, or morality, either, which is surely something the filmmakers might have considered if the film had been written and made during this calendar year, when the people in power of this country keep finding new ways to prove just show short they can come up in every situation.

Quite the contrary, the figures in this film seem to be decent, to know what they're doing, and to actually care about doing the right thing—whatever that may be under such unthinkable but always-possible circumstances. Even so, even the most effective and upstanding of folks are human, with at least minor flaws and foibles that might not seem too terrible on their own. Add all of those up in a chain of decisions that must be made and actions that must be taken under the highest of pressures, and all of those tiny imperfections become one great defect in a system that cannot afford even the most trivial of blemishes.

Initially, the filmmakers present this as something of a real-time thriller, and by the way, time here is yet another component that is just as vital as everything else. Once it becomes clear that a missile is in the air and heading in the direction of the United States, it's determined that the weapon will strike its target in less than 20 minutes.

The narrative itself is divided into three chapters, each of which cover the prelude to the process beginning and those important, increasingly harrowing minutes across distinct, sometimes-overlapping perspectives. The first time Oppenheim's screenplay restarts the events of this morning, a completely ordinary one in which everyone is just going about their usual routines and business, is quite jarring, because we expect some answer, resolution, or even release from the tension at hand. The filmmakers intentionally deny us any and all of those things.

Basically, the three sections move up the chain of command, starting with a military base in Alaska, where those countermeasures are located, and an operations center in Washington, D.C., that handles communications among the military's leaders, government officials, and the units on the ground that get the necessary work done. In this section, Oppenheim primarily focuses on Capt. Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson), who's running the communications side in D.C., and Maj. Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos), the commanding officer of that Alaskan base.

From there, we learn there's no warning that a missile has been launched, because whatever satellite that would have noticed that event was temporarily out of service. One of the most significant complications that arises as the narrative moves up that chain to observe those who know and care about intelligence operations and diplomacy is this uncertainty. If no one knows who fired that missile, how is anyone supposed to know if it's an actual threat, if there's a possibility it will reach its target, or, if the worst happens, against whom to retaliate? That last part raises an even more terrifying proposition, because the response to a nuclear attack essentially comes down to, as one character puts it, the choice between "surrender and suicide."

Much of this involves conversations, debates, shouted orders, and dreadful silence on the part of, during this opening story salvo, familiar faces or voices. They include Tracy Letts as the Army general overseeing the actual orders, Jared Harris as the Secretary of Defense, and Idris Elba's distinct baritone occasionally breaking into the discussions as the President. Once everyone realizes the missile is real and isn't falling into the sea or breaking apart as it goes suborbital and is on a course toward somewhere in the Midwest, the results are chaos and confusion, as everyone tries to keep a cool head but, for many obvious reasons, can't do that all the time.

Up the chain the narrative moves after the first go-around, giving us new eyes on how dismissive Letts' general is from the start, how the Deputy National Security Advisor played by Gabriel Basso loses valuable minutes to White House security necessities, and how the one person, an NSA analyst played by Greta Lee, who might offer solid advice on one potential attacker is on vacation. By the final telling of this story, the film has moved to the very top, where we see exactly how and why the people who will make the most consequential decisions have as little information, as little time, and as few options as they do.

Some might dismiss this narrative structure as repetitive, anticlimactic, and contrary to the film's success as a race-against-the-clock thriller. To do so, though, would be to ignore how intentional those very qualities are here, because Bigelow, who stages and constructs tension as well as any director working today (and does so here, impressively, in scenes that are mostly dialogue), and Oppenheim have something else in mind. A House of Dynamite isn't meant to be exciting. It puts forth questions we need to be asking and, as long as nuclear weapons exist, answers we don't want to hear.

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