The Earth is where we make our stand
A House of Dynamite is not about a building made of TNT. That would probably be less stressful than Catherine Bigelow's new thriller
So what is it about, and why is no one talking about it yet? From the Oscar-winning director of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty
A House of Dynamite follows American government officials as they deal with an unprecedented threat
a single missile heading straight for the city of Chicago. It's a race against time, not just to stop the projectile before it reaches its target
but to figure out who fired it in the first place. The crisis unfolds from multiple perspectives as
the military finds itself painfully unequipped to deal with a threat of such magnitude. Written by Noah Oppenheim, former president of NBC News, the film makes an effort to balance
ripped-from-the-headline's realism with stomach-churning suspense. A House of Dynamite is far from the most hyped-up movie of 2025. In fact, it's not even the most hyped-up Netflix
movie of 2025. But even though the streamer is more focused on advertising other projects like
Wake Up Dead Man and Frankenstein, Catherine Bigelow's newest masterclass intention promises
to be a sleeper hit during Movie Night at Home. They want to get in on the action early before it
gets nominated for a bunch of awards. From Thunderbolts to Weapons to the Phoenician
scheme, 2025 is the year of the ensemble cast. A House of Dynamites is no different, featuring a
handful of big names and character actors galore. Let's start from the very top. The President of
the United States is played by Knuckles the Echidna himself, Idris Elba. Even though the
English-born actor is ineligible for the U.S. presidency in real life, he's a world-class
performer and a veteran of ensemble casts thanks to his roles in The Wire and The Suicide Squad
You're the leader. You're supposed to be decisive. And I've decided that you should
eat a big bag of d***. How's that? Rebecca Ferguson from the Mission Impossible and Dune
movies appears alongside Elba as Captain Olivia Walker, while Gabriel Basso, star of The Night
Agent, portrays Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Barrington. Jared Harris of Mad Men fame
plays Secretary of Defense Reed Baker, whose daughter Caroline is played by Caitlin Deaver
from season two of The Last of Us. Don't expect Deaver to kill anyone with a golf club, though
Tracy Letts, who features as General Anthony Brody, is most famous for writing plays like
August, Osage County, and Bug, but he's also made appearances in films like Lady Bird and Ford
vs. Ferrari. Jason Clarke, who you might recognize from Bigelow's own Zero Dark Thirty
Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, and many others, was cast as Admiral-slash-Situation room official Mark Miller
"...220,000 dead at least." "...Yes." "...any more scooples about that?" Additional military personnel are played by The Little Mermaid's Jonah Howard King
and In the Heights actor Anthony Ramos Ramos isn the only original Hamilton cast member in the film either as Renee Elise Goldsberry plays the First Lady Moses Ingram from The Queen Gambits is a FEMA official
while past live star Greta Lee is the NSA's North Korea expert. Rounding out the cast are Willa Fitzgerald, Kyle Allen, Malachi Beasley
Brian T., Brittany O'Grady, Benga Akinabe, Francesca Carpanini, and Abubakar Ali. The most surprising casting choice of all, though, is definitely WNBA player Angel Reese as herself
We won't spoil how Reese fits into the story, but we can safely say that she isn't the one
who launches the missile. Probably. I'll take that role. I'll take the bad guy role
There's no way that a cast of this high a caliber could have been assembled without a big-name filmmaker, but Catherine Bigelow certainly fits the bill
She's one of the best thriller directors of her generation, with a resume that goes back
more than 40 years. Bigelow's directorial debut, the 1981 low-budget independent biker
drama The Loveless, wasn't seen by many people when it came out. Her second effort, Near Dark
return to the biker-style subgenre with an added vampiric twist. That one didn't make much money
either, but is considered a cult classic to this day, largely thanks to an unforgettable Bill Paxton
performance. Bigelow's third film, Blue Steel, starring Jamie Lee Curtis, didn't make much of a
splash at the box office either, but she refused to give up, and she ended up striking gold with
surfer-centric crime drama Point Break. The 1991 Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze vehicle is loved
by many for its original premise, impressive stunts, and simmering sexual tension between the
two leads. It certainly helped that Bigelow got some assistance from her husband developing the
script for Point Break, especially since her husband was literally James Cameron. They divorced
the same year that the movie was released. Bigelow's follow-up to Point Break was a criminally
underseen Strange Days, a cyberpunk crime film starring Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett
After that came several less memorable projects. The Weight of Water and K-19 The Widowmaker
wrapped up the first era of Bigelow's directing career. Like everyone else in America, Bigelow found herself extremely shaken by 9-11 and the subsequent
War on Terror. Thus began Bigelow's second wind as a helmer of topical political and military
thrillers, starting with 2008's The Hurt Locker. You're a wild man, you know that
He's a wild man, you know that?" Starring Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie as soldiers tasked with the impossibly nerve-wracking
job of neutralizing live explosives in Iraq The Hurt Locker made Bigelow the first woman in history to win the Academy Award for Best Director Her 2012 follow Zero Dark 30 earned five Oscar nominations by depicting the manhunt for Al founder Osama bin Laden
I want targets. Do your f***ing jobs. Bring me people to kill
Both films are unbelievably tense, something that you can be sure to expect from her newest
offering. It's been eight years since the release of Bigelow's last movie, the 60s set Detroit
which largely went under the radar. Will A House of Dynamite restore her status as an awards season
darling? Netflix certainly hopes so. A House of Dynamite premiered at the Venice International
Film Festival, and while it didn't take home the coveted Golden Lion, it gave critics their first
opportunity to watch the movie. Reception for Bigelow's newest effort isn't quite as rapturous
as it was for The Hurt Locker, but the vast majority of reviewers have found it thoroughly
enjoyable. One of them was Nicholas Barber, who wrote for BBC, Once again, Bigelow balances her knack for building excruciating tension with her devotion
to deeply researched, no-nonsense military and political authenticity. A House of Dynamite is more riveting than most thrillers, and more terrifying than most
horror films. Those are strong words, but Time magazine's Stephanie Zakharic was similarly impressed
As she put it, A House of Dynamites is one of the most stressful viewing experiences I've had in years
It's a movie with a seemingly endless number of moving parts, cut with diamond precision
Other critics weren't 100% sold, but nevertheless entertained. In his review for Vulture, Bilga Abiri stated
A House of Dynamite actually has a predictable set of moves, at least once the main plot kicks
in, but this makes Bigelow's ability to maintain suspense that much more impressive
Regardless of their opinions on it, every critic who's seen A House of Dynamite seems
to agree that you'll finish the film much more uneasy about America's defense capabilities
than when you started it. As Ben Allen wrote for GQ, It is, to put it mildly, completely f***ing terrifying
If you have nuclear war anxiety, and of course you do, it'll give your nightmares a decent
dollop of texture. Here's a question you may or may not have been wondering about this entire video
Is the plot of a house of dynamite actually all that fantastical? Could a nuclear explosive
launched by an unknown power really cross the Pacific Ocean to reach the Chicago metropolitan
area? Well, they don't call them intercontinental ballistic missiles for nothing. Multiple nations
considered rivals to the U.S. have access to ICBMs capable of reaching the Windy City with distance
to spare. Russia, China, and North Korea all claim to possess weapons of this nature, as well as
territory within striking distance and shaky diplomatic relations with the U.S. It's a scary thought, but at the end of the day, even a dictator like Kim Jong-un understands
the concept of mutually assured destruction If just one country launches nukes every other country that has them will be doing the same within minutes Putin Xi and Kim probably won be shooting at population centers unless it the last possible resort but that technically not the only way that nuclear conflict
could kick off. What if a mad general launched an attack of his own accord, Dr. Strangelove style
Is it that bad, sir? Looks like it's pretty hairy. If you've seen that movie, you know it doesn't have a very happy ending. Even if America managed
to fix that particular flaw in their fail-safe system, that doesn't mean that it couldn't happen
somewhere else. So perhaps the most important question of all is this. If a missile was on its
way, how royally f***ed would we all actually be? That depends on a lot of factors. Thankfully
the United States has a ground-based ballistic missile defense system in place. In other words
we have a bunch of rockets that are specifically designed to blow up other rockets. So barring a
critical malfunction of some kind, the most important variable is the potential for human
error. Government and military personnel are people, too, and everyone makes mistakes
Unfortunately, theirs have more existential consequences than most workplace incidents. In House of Dynamite, the government has under 20 minutes to mobilize and stop the missile before
Chicago is turned into a crater. Can everyone do their parts as a cog in the machine and save
America in less time than it takes to watch an episode of Family Guy? It's a challenge
to say the least. Holy crap! Anybody else feel that
Much like The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, House of Dynamite was born from real anxieties
about the state of international affairs. Even though the scenario that it depicts is much more
fictional, the threat that nuclear weapons pose to every single person in the world is very real
During the press conference for a new movie in Venice, Bigelow said that she believes people
need to start having serious conversations about the issue. Maybe we reduce the nuclear stockpile someday, but in the meantime, we are really living in a
house of dynamite. That's probably part of the reason why Bigelow felt that partnering with
Netflix to distribute the film was a good idea, to get it playing in as many homes as possible
That tactic certainly worked for Don't Look Up, as Adam McKay's climate change allegory ended up
becoming one of the most popular films ever released on the platform. Whether or not it
actually got people talking about climate change is another story. I think we're all gonna die!
If you agree with Bigelow that nuclear weapons are worth discussing, there's no better way
to start a dialogue than showing a house of dynamite to your family and friends
The film drops on Netflix October 24th, but if you don't think you can wait that long
it'll be showing in select theaters starting October 10th