In defense of "A House of Dynamite"
Tuesday, November 25, 2025 at 6:00PM by Lynn Lee
A House of Dynamite is…dynamite! Why do I feel like the only one who still thinks this, and is still excited about a movie that’s fallen completely off the awards buzz radar?
I saw a screening of Kathryn Bigelow’s nuclear doomsday procedural – really, that’s what it is – at this year’s Middleburg Film Festival, right around the time it was getting its bare-minimum Netflix theatrical release. As the credits rolled, I had two simultaneous reactions:
Wow, that was some damn good filmmaking.
Wow, we are so utterly fucked...
Warning ***SPOILERS*** Warning
And that, mind you, was without Bigelow even showing a nuclear strike or confirming whether there’s a counterstrike. The film goes right up to that critical decision point, then cuts to black without revealing the decision or its fallout (literally or figuratively). This shades-of-Sopranos-finale non-conclusion seems to have been the cinematic equivalent of blue balls for many if not most viewers; one of my friends told me that her husband had never been so angry at the end of a movie. The other complaint I’ve heard repeatedly is, ironically, about its repetitive structure: specifically, the fact that it shows the same approximately 20 minutes – between the detection of a missile launch and its impact – from multiple perspectives, without changing the ultimate takeaway.
I understand the frustration, but I don’t share it. Rather, I think it’s a mark of the film’s brilliance that both of its most divisive aspects – the narrative repetition and the ending – are features, not bugs, integral to its overall design and ethos. While unrelentingly tense, House of Dynamite isn’t a thriller or a disaster flick in the usual sense. Characteristically, Bigelow’s fascination here is with the machinery of the government response to a critical threat; in this respect, among her prior works it’s closest in spirit to Zero Dark Thirty, compressed into an even tighter and more consequential operational space. It also owes a great debt to Dr. Strangelove and an even greater debt to Fail Safe, as screenwriter Noah Oppenheim acknowledged at a short Q&A after the screening I attended. What sets it apart is its recognition that even where said machinery is operating as it should, even where everyone who’s keeping it running is a dedicated professional trying to play by the book and the book itself was put together by presumably rational-minded experts, the entire system is still built to fail.
Is this vision of unavoidable doom exaggerated? Perhaps; there are matters of technical accuracy and plausibility that the plot glosses over in order to inject extra urgency into the setup. (In reality, the U.S. military would likely have been able to trace the origin of the missile, and even under the scenario presented, it could probably be assessed with higher confidence not to be Russia or China.) But the failure of the ground-based interceptors to hit their target is all too possible a contingency, and the insanely short time window until impact a certainty. In Bigelow and Oppenheim’s eyes, there is no “correct” decision possible as to next steps, only different degrees of catastrophic outcomes. Their focus in exploring “how did we get here?” is less on the “here” and more on the “how.”
Is the three-part repetition of the decisionmaking window really necessary, though? Many of the people I’ve spoken to say no; we got it the first time, we don’t learn anything new the second or third. I disagree. In the Q&A I attended, Oppenheim explained that the film was structured to show the events from ascending levels of authority: first, the personnel at Fort Greely and the White House Situation Room (with particular focus on officers played by Rebecca Ferguson and Anthony Ramos), the folks closest to the ground but with the least amount of power to influence decisions; next, the head of Strategic Command (Tracy Letts, delightfully crusty) and the Deputy National Security Advisor (Gabriel Basso), the experts who, in the end, can only advise different courses based on their gut instincts; and finally the Secretary of Defense (Jared Harris) and the President (Idris Elba), with the most power but also the least amount of relevant knowledge and experience.
In each iteration of the cycle, more information is layered on about these people and the people they consult. It’s not enough to develop them into full-fledged characters – this is not that kind of movie – but the fleeting details we catch do help illuminate the thinking behind words we initially hear from boxes on a secure VTC screen. They also remind us that these are individual humans with everything to lose, not just cogs in the national military and national security apparatus – whether it’s Ferguson’s character discovering her son’s little toy dinosaur in her pocket or Harris’ SecDef calling his daughter (Kaitlyn Dever) in Chicago (the target city) and, in what I found a very moving scene, gaining ephemerous comfort in the thought that her last moments will be with someone she loves before he calmly and deliberately walks off a roof.
That overwhelming sense of impotence culminates in the deliberations of Elba’s POTUS, who up till now has been just a black box and impatient disembodied voice on the VTC call. Here he comes across as a decent, reasonably intelligent guy who’s trying to do the right thing but is in in way over his head. He listens dutifully to the military officer who carries the nuclear football and actually understands what’s in it, but ultimately falls back on wanting to talk to his wife (Renee Elise Goldsberry), who unfortunately is on an African safari (yes, seriously) with a bad connection. The final little chuckle he gives when prompted for his orders (“yes, my orders”) says it all. In this kind of impossible situation, it doesn’t matter whether the President is competent, or even rational. Given our current circumstances, it’s hard to say whether that’s more comforting or terrifying. That we even have to ponder it may be House of Dynamite’s most disturbing revelation.
A House of Dynamite is streaming exclusively on Netflix.
Reader Comments (2)
Fine for the first 2 parts but then Idris showed up as the most unconvincing President for a while and I lost all interest.
It's fantastic!!! Why would such a great film need to be defended??? Crazy times!!