Audiences and Experts Are Split Over ‘A House of Dynamite’s Realism and Its Nuclear War Story

October 29, 2025

A House of Dynamite, now streaming on Netflix, imagines what would happen if a nuclear warhead were launched at the United States. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty fame, the film repeats the same heart-pounding 20 minutes three times, from different perspectives up and down the chain of command. It’s standard fare for Bigelow: a slickly produced, wonky, and jargon-heavy geopolitical thriller with an impressive ensemble cast that’s surprisingly easy to watch despite its highest-possible stakes subject matter. With her track record, it’s been floated as an awards contender for months, and it got good reviews on the heels of its Venice premiere.

But at subsequent screenings and upon its wider home release, A House of Dynamite has become more controversial… and not just for its already infamous ending. While some critics and audiences see a chilling and timely cautionary tale that feels as plausible as any other potential catastrophe we might face these days, others see an underdeveloped thought experiment that’s too full of plot holes and thin characters to be taken seriously. The Pentagon even issued a statement in response to the film’s premise. If all press is good press, the fact that viewers and experts are going to war over A House of Dynamite will only help its cause. But more to the point, which is it? Does the film withstand scrutiny, or is Bigelow’s latest all for naught?

‘A House of Dynamite’ Is a Divisive Nuclear Info Dump

Netflix

When A House of Dynamite begins, the soldiers on duty at Fort Greely, Alaska, realize that an intercontinental ballistic missile is headed for the United States. Radar systems fail to detect the launch, which not only means there’s less time to stop the ICBM (about 19 minutes), but also means the origin of the bomb remains unclear. The White House Situation Room is alerted, as is STRATCOM, and the President of the United States (Idris Elba). America’s first line of defense is to intercept the ICBM with two ground-based interceptors deployed from Fort Greely. The first malfunctions; the second misses its target.

At this point, it’s all but a foregone conclusion that the ICBM will hit what is determined to be Chicago and kill approximately 10 million people. The Secretary of Defense (Jared Harris), whose daughter lives there, is furious to learn from a Deputy National Security Advisor (Gabriel Basso) that the $50 billion interceptors only had a 61% success rate in the first place. As there is no plan B, the goal shifts from saving Chicago to preventing further devastation.

North Korea, Russia, and China are identified as possible culprits, and two camps develop within the Situation Room and STRATCOM. One argues for restraint, the other for retaliation. The President is given the nuclear football — a binder of response options — and is asked to provide a secret code before delivering his orders. In a move that drew the ire of many, A House of Dynamite cuts to the credits before audiences know what those orders were.

Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim have explained that they didn’t want a particular foreign country to be the villain. Instead, they wanted the unresolved threat of nuclear war itself to be the boogeyman. Whether that choice works for viewers is a matter of personal taste, but whether the film illustrates the situation accurately is not. Bigelow maintains she didn’t work directly with current military brass, for the sake of artistic independence, but she did consult with tech experts and former Pentagon employees to get the details right. The Pentagon has taken issue with the movie’s depiction of America’s missile defenses (it claims tests have shown the latest generation of interceptors to be 100% accurate). However, other sources suggest that much of A House of Dynamite is based on fact.

The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation (whose mission, it should be said, clearly aligns with Bigelow’s) published a minute-by-minute watch-along guide to help viewers understand the real-world implications of what was happening in the movie. For their part, perhaps sensing a backlash, Netflix conducted and released its own expert interview for subscribers’ reference.

Bigelow Gets the Small Stuff Right, but the Big Picture Is More Complicated

Some of the detractors’ gripes aren’t totally off-base. For example, even if an ICBM managed to evade sophisticated radar systems, pretty basic math would allow us to calculate the bomb’s point of origin. It would be less apparent, however, whether the missile was actually a nuclear weapon. And while ground-based interceptors are an expensive and limited resource, more would almost certainly be deployed if it meant saving millions of lives and averting nuclear war. Not to mention, those interceptors wouldn’t be much help against a real, large-scale nuclear attack, which would likely consist of more than one missile being fired at a time.

Though the film presents diplomacy as a tool, it would be one that government functionaries would rely on more heavily. And the President wouldn’t be pressured to respond before Chicago was potentially obliterated. The ticking clock makes sense, logically and narratively, as it pertains to the fictional ICBM aimed at us; it doesn’t as it pertains to the nuclear football. In reality, a president would likely wait to see what happened in Chicago before choosing from the “menu.”

In the film’s defense, Bigelow and Oppenheim researched at least well enough to be credible when it came to all those places, names, and numbers. It would take about 30 minutes or less for an ICBM to reach the continental United States from Asia. Fort Greely is one of two sites where GBIs are kept. According to the Center for Arms Control, they’ve cost closer to $67 billion, have about a 45% fail rate (a little worse than Basso’s character claims), and one way they fail is when the “kill vehicle” doesn’t properly separate from the rocket, as is the case in A House of Dynamite.

Dan Karbler, former STRATCOM Chief of Staff (who also appears in the film), corroborates that the environments and procedures are largely as they would be in a similar situation. The President, who wouldn’t necessarily have rehearsed this sequence of events beforehand, would identify himself with a code and have the final say, while everyone else involved would contribute in pairs, as when two pilots board a stealth bomber in case the President chooses to strike back.

But the most accurate thing about A House of Dynamite is how precarious life is in a nuclear world. There really wouldn’t be much opportunity to de-escalate, nor much time or reason to alert the media or instruct the public. Until the global stockpile of nuclear weapons can be reduced to zero, we’re all dependent on the competence of the regular people who fill these vital positions. A House of Dynamite is streaming on Netflix.