A House of Dynamite Review

Kathryn Bigelow's first film since Detroit (2017) was announced as a Netflix thriller in 2024 and shot that year, mostly in New Jersey. Noah Oppenheim's script covers the minutes between the detection of a single missile of unknown origin and its projected impact on Chicago, and then covers them again, and again: once from the White House Situation Room, where Rebecca Ferguson's duty officer runs the call, once through Strategic Command and the deputy national security adviser (Gabriel Basso), and once beside the president (Idris Elba).

The first pass is superb. Barry Ackroyd's restless camera and Kirk Baxter's cutting make procedure feel like panic, the jargon goes untranslated, and Ferguson, composed until the moment she calls home, gives the performance of the film. Anthony Ramos as the officer at Fort Greely waiting on the interceptors and Tracy Letts as a general pressing to retaliate are vivid in fragments.

The repetition costs it: each replay adds context and drains tension, and where Oppenheim chooses to stop will frustrate some viewers. The Missile Defense Agency publicly disputed the film's figure for interceptor reliability, a sign of how close it cuts. Netflix put it in select theaters on October 10, 2025 and on the service on October 24.