A House of Dynamite (2025)

4 Stars (out of 4)

Missile Command

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Midway through her career, director Kathryn Bigelow made a leap from "B"-type genre movies — including the cult classics Near Dark and Point Break — to more adult films with more pertinent themes. These were The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty, and the underrated Detroit, one an Oscar winner, one an Oscar nominee, and all three among the best films of their years. They were all written by Mark Boal, and if there was ever any question about whether Bigelow could succeed as a filmmaker without him, that question has been answered, definitively, with her masterful eleventh film, A House of Dynamite. It opens in theaters on October 10, 2025, and will begin streaming on Netflix October 24.

Written by Noah Oppenheim (Jackie), A House of Dynamite has the same sense of real-world urgency as the previous trio, but this time the tale is fictional, and cautionary. A nuclear missile is launched from an unknown location by an unknown country. In Alaska, a military base led by Major Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos), is tasked with shooting the missile down, but fails. The missile is then on target to hit Chicago, and will kill millions. The film is told in three different sections, each titled after a line of dialogue: "Inclination is Flattening," "Hitting a Bullet with a Bullet," and "A House Filled with Dynamite." Each section depicts the same events from different points of view, including military stations, the White House Situation Room, FEMA headquarters, United States Strategic Command, Capitol Hill, and finally, the President of the United States (Idris Elba).

The movie has stars, but their roles are unflashy, and totally in service to the story. They each appear mainly in only one section. Rebecca Ferguson plays Captain Olivia Walker of the Situation Room; she has left a sick little boy at home with her husband. Gabriel Basso plays Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington, who is mostly seen walking swiftly through Washington D.C. while on a Zoom call with generals. (In a strange but realistic touch, his boss, the National Security Advisor, is out that day.) Jared Harris plays Secretary of Defense Reid Baker, whose daughter (Kaitlyn Dever, in one scene) lives in Chicago. The legendary Tracy Letts manages to get some sharp line readings in as General Anthony Brady of STRATCOM. Moses Ingram plays Cathy Rogers, only recently appointed to FEMA, but shocked to learn that she has been assigned evacuation status. Jonah Hauer-King, Greta Lee (Past Lives), and Jason Clarke (Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty) also appear.

I don't want to talk about the details of what actually transpires and I certainly don't want to talk about how it ends, but the three sections are a masterstroke of an idea. It allows the story to move quickly, but opens up the time to explore the complex nuances within this situation. There are certain landmarks that we hear or see all three times, so that the sections are easily synced up. Since we are witnessing things from different angles, we are left with a very clear idea of the details without losing the suspense. And this movie is suspenseful. I felt grabbed from the very first moment, and not released until the final moments, and even then it took me a few minutes to let out my breath. (And, I never checked my watch. I almost always check my watch.) This is powerful, virtuoso filmmaking.

Aside from her obvious skill, Bigelow's real power is her ability to view and understand violence from a subtle, nuanced gray area. She has often been touted as a woman who makes "man's pictures," but she is better than most men. To put a point to it, she understands that violence is both alluring and tragic, both exciting and horrific, and that it can be all these things simultaneously. The Hurt Locker demonstrated this theme beautifully with the much-discussed supermarket sequence near the end. And Zero Dark Thirty was a thrilling manhunt, but for a man who caused a real-world tragedy with real-world consequences. (I would argue that even her earlier genre films adhere to this approach.) A House of Dynamite continues this signature style, confirming Bigelow as one of the great auteurs of our time. This is a film about power, and a warning that, once a certain line is crossed, we can never go back.