A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE*****

Director Kathryn Bigelow (THE HURT LOCKER) and writer Noah Oppenheim (JACKIE) have created a stunningly good film that keeps your pulse racing and your mind spinning in the most disturbingly brilliant film of 2025. It will be on Netflix on October 24th but I urge you to watch it in a cinema if you can, to take advantage of the stunning score and sound design, and brilliant lensing.

The film is Apocalypse Rashomon. Someone has fired a nuclear weapon at the USA. The military and political command scramble to figure out who did it, but it's unclear whether it's Russia, North Korea, China, a cyberattack or an IT malfunction. Even switching from Defcon 4 to 2 alerts the USA's enemies to the fact that they are on a war footing. The single point of decision making is the President. Within 18 minutes of the missile being fired - not even hitting its target - just fired - he has to decide whether to retaliate or wait. Should he knock out the command and control centres of the USA's enemies, with mass casualties, to prevent yet more US cities being lost? Or should he trust Russia when they say it's not them? Take a chance that it was just a rogue actor or an IT failure? And risk losing an all-out nuclear war in minutes? What would you decide?

We see this decision tree played out over three acts and from three perspectives. The first segment is in the White House situation room, helmed by Rebecca Ferguson's highly trained naval officer. The reactions are varied. Some flee, panicked. Others buckle down and do their jobs, knowing their families are at risk and that they cannot warn them. We see the news trickle out into the White House and panic spread. There's a moment when Ferguson's character thinks her colleague and friend has left her. We think he might have too. He was planning to propose to his girlfriend that evening. When he returns we feel her relief: if this is the end of the world she won't be alone. There's another scene where she turns her face from that colleague to momentarily experience, and then have to peg back, her grief. This is beautifully acted by Ferguson and captured by DP Barry Ackroyd. Kathryn Bigelow's admiration for the professionalism and duty that these men and women exude is palpable and affecting.

In the second segment we run the 18 minutes from the perspective of those in Stratcom - a US military compound in the middle of nowhere, deep underground. These generals have rehearsed this situation hundreds of times and are prepared to take tough decisions. Except the decision is not theirs to take. They are merely in an advisory role. The always superb Tracy Letts anchors this segment as a four star general advising the president to go for an all out retaliation. On the other side of the argument, and the conference call, is a ludicrously young national security advisor played by Gabriel Basso (HILLBILLY ELEGY). He believes that POTUS should hold back and try and calm the other nuclear nations. 

The final segment is when we actually meet the President, as played by Idris Elba, who has so far just been a black tile and a panicking voice in a conference call. He is the one who has to take in all the information, and in the final scene, make his decision accompanied only by a mid-ranking Naval officer who shadows him at all times, carrying the nuclear football. He presents the President with a book of laminated options and explains the severity of the outcomes. What an impossible decision! Meanwhile, the heart of the film is arguably the Secretary of Defense, as played by Jared Harris (Chernobyl), who learns that his estranged daughter (Kaitlyn Dever) is in the city under attack, and has to somehow be of service to his President when his world is falling apart. 

I cannot speak highly enough of the actors in this film who have to essay their characters and moral dilemmas in very limited screen time. The characters are all good people trying to do their best. Even the most hawkish of them - Tracy Letts' general - has a reasonable and rational response. But the situation is impossible. I spent much of the film petrified at what would happen with the current incumbents in the roles of SecDefense and Potus, but also reassured at the competence of those in positions around them. I think this is partly Bigelow's point. Admire the professionals. Vote knowing that in extremis these are the decision makers you are empowering. 

I feel strongly that she deserves to be Oscar-nominated for this film, as does her screenwriter. There is real skill in creating a film of such verisimilitude and unrelenting tension, as well as one that provokes so many vital and urgent questions. The way that Oppenheim doubles back on the same scene from different angles, and deepens our understanding over the three segments, is masterful. Gabriel Basso's character is a case in point. He starts off as a bit of a joke. A tile on a zoom call jogging to work and losing signal. By the end he has gravitas and our empathy.

I would also nominate Rebecca Ferguson and Jared Harris in the Supporting Actor categories for performances of deep emotional power created in a handful of minutes of screen time. This is Harris' film more than anyone else's. Kudos also to Greta Lee and Tracy Letts.

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE has a running time of 112 minutes and is rated R. It played Venice and will be released on Netflix on October 24th.