If the United States is as susceptible to a surprise nuclear attack as A House of Dynamite implies, then we’d be doomed even if the keys hadn’t been handed over to someone busy selling presidential watches on the side. As the movie opens, a rogue missile has been launched and is en route to the American Midwest. It’s unclear where it originated from; the government and military only have 19 minutes before impact to respond. That scenario supplies the movie most of its nerve-jangling verve, as director Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd employ an overly familiar docudrama style (quick zooms and frequent rack focusing within a given shot). Screenwriter Noah Oppenheim, meanwhile, shakes up the narrative structure by revisiting those 19 minutes in distinct sections, each one from a different character’s point of view. The most effective element is the score by Volker Bertelmann (All Quiet on the Western Front), which has moments that are the audio equivalent of your stomach dropping out. A classic nuclear thriller from the Cold War era—1964’s Fail Safe—is the clear model here, including the attempt to flesh out these government types by introducing them in family contexts (a child’s little dinosaur figure that is inadvertently smuggled into a war room does a lot of emotional work). While the ensemble cast is laudable—Rebecca Ferguson, Idris Elba, Tracy Letts, Jared Harris, Anthony Ramos, Moses Ingram, Greta Lee—there isn’t a Henry Fonda to anchor things. Not that his president, in Fail Safe, could prevent disaster either. Both movies land with a doomy boom.
(10/17/2025)
