A House of Dynamite

Kathryn Bigelow: A House of Dynamite (US 2025).

US 2025. Distributor: Netflix. PC: First Light Pictures (Kathryn Bigelow) / Kingsgate Films (Greg Shapiro) / Prologue Entertainment (Noah Oppenheim).

    D: Kathryn Bigelow. SC: Noah Oppenheim. Cin: Barry Ackroyd - source format: Arriraw 4.6 K - master format: 4K - release formats: DCP, video UHD. PD: Jeremy Hindle. AD: Chris Shriver. Set dec: David Schlesinger. Cost: Sarah Edwards. Makeup: Jackie Risotto. Hair: Kerrie Smith. SFX: Devin Maggio. VFX: Distillery VFX - Eyeline Studios (virtual production). VFX: Tamriko Barda. Lidar scanning: NOAR Technologies. M: Volker Bertelmann. S: Paul N. J. Ottosson. ED: Kirk Baxter. Casting: Susanne Scheel.

    Cast according to Wikipedia:

Idris Elba as the President of the United States

Rebecca Ferguson as Captain Olivia Walker, the duty officer in charge of the White House Situation Room during the crisis

Gabriel Basso as Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington

Jared Harris as Secretary of Defense Reid Baker

Tracy Letts as General Anthony Brady, Combatant Commander of United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM)

Anthony Ramos as Major Daniel Gonzalez, commander of Fort Greely, Alaska

Moses Ingram as Cathy Rogers, a FEMA official with the Office of National Continuity Programs

Jonah Hauer-King as Lieutenant Commander Robert Reeves, the Presidential Military Aide

Greta Lee as Ana Park, the National Intelligence Officer for North Korea

Jason Clarke as Admiral Mark Miller, Director of the White House Situation Room

Malachi Beasley as SCPO William Davis, Walker's colleague in the Situation Room

Brian Tee as SAIC Ken Cho, the head of the United States Secret Service Presidential Protection Detail

Brittany O'Grady as Lily Baerington, Jake's pregnant wife and a Senatorial aide on Capitol Hill

Gbenga Akinnagbe as Major General Steven Kyle, Director of Global Operations (J-3), STRATCOM

Willa Fitzgerald as Abby Jansing, a CNN representative at the White House Press Briefing Room

Renée Elise Goldsberry as the First Lady of the United States

Kyle Allen as Captain Jon Zimmer, a B-2 bomber pilot

Kaitlyn Dever as Caroline Baker, Baker's daughter

Francesca Carpanini as Staff Sergeant Ali Jones, a soldier at Fort Greely

Abubakr Ali as Lieutenant Dan Buck, a soldier at Fort Greely

Angel Reese as herself in a cameo appearance

    Loc: Kenya, Iceland.

    112 min

    Festival premiere: 2 Sep 2025 Venice

    Limited theatrical release: 10 Oct 2025

    No theatrical release in Finland.

    Streaming debut: 24 Oct 2025 Netflix

    Viewed with Finnish subtitles on Netflix at home in Helsinki, 25 Dec 2025. Streaming incomplete: Netflix interrupts the streaming abruptly after the beginning of the end credits.

Official tagline

"When a single, unattributed missile is launched at the United States, a race begins to determine who is responsible and how to respond."

Director’s Statement

"I grew up in an era when hiding under your school desk was considered the go-to protocol for surviving an atomic bomb. It seems absurd now — and it was — but at the time, the threat felt so immediate that such measures were taken seriously. Today, the danger has only escalated. Multiple nations possess enough nuclear weapons to end civilisation within minutes. And yet, there’s a kind of collective numbness — a quiet normalisation of the unthinkable. How can we call this “defense” when the inevitable outcome is total destruction?"

"I wanted to make a film that confronts this paradox — to explore the madness of a world that lives under the constant shadow of annihilation, yet rarely speaks of it."

AA: I identify with Kathryn Bigelow's Cold War experience. During my first year at school I learned my first words in Russian: Novaya Zemlya. My teacher was born during the Russian Empire and knew to pronounce the name correctly. In October 1961 at Novaya Zemlya, the most physically powerful device ever deployed on Earth, a thermonuclear aerial bomb, later called the Tsar Bomba, was detonated. It was the most powerful of more than 60 nuclear tests there in 1961-1962. In Finnish Lapland, in Utsjoki and Inari, reindeer herders still blame high cesium counts from nuclear tests for their high cancer mortality. In 1963, the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, Outer Space and Under Water was signed. In 1989-1991 the Cold War ended and the nuclear threat as well. But in recent years nuclear rearmament is back.

"Inclination is flattening" is both a technical expression for a rogue nuclear missile's trajectory and a metaphor for the global nuclear horror in general.

Kathryn Bigelow has adopted a cool, objective, understated and antidramatic approach to her movie about the end of the world.

There are only twenty minutes to impact. The minutes are stretched to two hours within a threefold storyline in which the events are repeated from multiple perspectives. I INCLINATION IS FLATTENING takes place at the White House Situation Room. II HITTING A BULLET WITH A BULLET takes us to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. III A HOUSE FILLED WITH DYNAMITE focuses on the President at a basketball event and the First Lady who is in Kenya. AFTERMATH is set outside the Raven Rock Mountain Complex, "the underground Pentagon".

The general sense of this is of committed professionals at the top of their game facing an overwhelming situation. All details are in place, but the big picture is inadequate. The world ends in incomprehension and helplessness.

I have no competence in judging the plausibility of the story, but I am thinking about classics of contemporary political history such as Steve Coll's Ghost Wars and The Achilles Trap and Tim Weiner's The Mission. So much high quality professional effort, and such a failure in grasping the big picture. The danger can grow with the degradation of the internet and the rise of chat robots characterized by the Oxford Dictionary's words of the year "brain rot" and "rage bait".

The nuclear apocalypse movie became a trend with On the Beach, Fail Safe, Dr. Strangelove and The Bedford Incident. Post-apocalyptic movies became a trend, too, from The Planet of the Apes to The End. Kathryn Bigelow's own Strange Days came close to the territory.

The ending of A House of Dynamite is elliptic in the extreme. In her statement, Bigelow addresses our "collective numbness — a quiet normalisation of the unthinkable". We live in an age of a simultaneous information flood and a denial of the big picture: about climate disaster, a dystopian turn in information technology, baby killers rampant in the Holy Land - and the risk of a nuclear apocalypse. 

To me, A House of Dynamite is not Kathryn Bigelow's best film, but it is a startling vision about an age of denial and postponing decision until it is too late.

The Netflix experience was marred by an abrupt stop to the viewing when the end credits had barely started. After a trial run of two movies similarly disrupted I have no desire to continue with Netflix.