Warning: This article discusses spoilers for .
If the U.S. government found itself with less than 20 minutes to decide humanity’s fate after an unidentified nuclear missile was launched at the country, what decision would they make?
This central question forms the premise of A House of Dynamite, a new military-industrial thriller directed by and filmmaker which is currently available on Netflix. The film has garnered since its debut at the Venice Film Festival. Almost the entire two-hour runtime is spent within this brief impact window, with the same approximately 18-minute period replayed three times from the viewpoints of different military and political figures.
A House of Dynamite starts with Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson), the senior duty officer in the White House Situation Room, arriving for what she anticipates to be a typical workday. Instead, she is informed of the missile launch and must immediately act to try and neutralize the threat. Meanwhile, at a missile-defense base in Fort Greely, Alaska, Major Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos) and his team are tasked with deploying two ground-based interceptors designed to destroy the incoming warhead, which is confirmed to be heading for Chicago. They fail to hit their target, an outcome that, we learn, has a nearly 50 percent probability. Or, as Secretary of Defense Reid Baker (Jared Harris) exclaims, “So, it’s a f-cking coin toss?!”
In the second part of the film, we observe the differing approaches to the crisis presented by General Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts), the highest-ranking military officer at United States Strategic Command, and Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington (Gabriel Basso). Brady advises the President (Idris Elba) to launch a full-scale assault on all potential nuclear adversaries, while Baerington urges him to refrain from any action. The movie’s final segment then shifts between Baker, whose primary concern is contacting his daughter (Kaitlyn Dever) in Chicago rather than offering advice, and the President, who holds the ultimate authority over the government’s response.
The entity responsible for the attack is never identified, a deliberate ambiguity that screenwriter Noah Oppenheim (, ) stated was intended to prevent audiences from scapegoating. “[T]he entire world has built this system where we have nine nuclear countries,” he explained to . “We’ve got thousands of weapons, any one of which could go off at any given time, based on either the decision of an insane person in a leadership position or a mistake. So, we wanted to focus on the system, not any one bad actor or villain.”
What is the ending of A House of Dynamite?
After being hastily removed from a charity basketball event, our unnamed President is handed the so-called and informed by nuclear football handler Lieutenant Commander Robert Reeves (Jonah Hauer-King) that he must choose from a range of retaliatory strike options. The President in A House of Dynamite is depicted as a seemingly thoughtful and compassionate leader. Nevertheless, this offers little solace in such dire circumstances.
“That is the point we wanted to make,” Oppenheim told Deadline. “Even in the best-case scenario, if you had a president who is thoughtful, responsible, informed, deliberative—to ask someone, anyone, to make a decision about the fate of all mankind in a matter of minutes while he’s running for his life simultaneously is insane.”
Then, just as the President is about to reveal his decision, the screen goes black and the credits begin, deliberately leaving the outcome unresolved. In one sense, it seems appropriate for viewers to ponder how they believe the government should react to such an unimaginably grave crisis. However, after all that tension, the film’s surprisingly unsatisfying ending also feels somewhat like a shortcut.
From an entertainment perspective, we have just experienced two of the most suspenseful hours of filmmaking released this year. After all that, we are not granted the satisfaction of a neat resolution, nor the chilling finality of a massive explosion. Thanks to , we’ve been conditioned to expect our protagonist, at least, to survive, even if there are casualties or the global order needs rebuilding. In A House of Dynamite, there is no such emotional release. There isn’t even a hero.
A House of Dynamite clearly aims to highlight the fragility of a system reliant on mutually assured destruction as a deterrent, especially in today’s increasingly volatile political climate. However, it ultimately avoids taking a definitive geopolitical stance beyond the notions that decision-makers are woefully unprepared to handle such a moment in a real-world scenario, and that nuclear annihilation would be unequivocally catastrophic. Challenging viewers to contemplate the perpetual state of conflict in our world is commendable. But should the existential burden of how the most powerful individuals on Earth might choose to destroy us truly fall upon our shoulders?
Bigelow, for her part, seems to believe the answer is yes. In an interview with the , she described the film’s open ending as a call to action. “I felt like the fact that the bomb didn’t go off was an opportunity to start a conversation,” she said. “I’d like to see people decide they don’t want to live in a world that’s this volatile or this combustible. And then of course, the next step is to reach out to their representatives and try to, you know, create a movement.”