House of Dynamite

Kathryn Bigelow, the Oscar-winning director of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, returns to the global and political stage with an intense, urgent meditation on the specter of nuclear catastrophe. The film follows the countdown that leads to an unattributed strike on the United States, then rewinds to trace responses from multiple points of view – –the halls of power and the military command centers —  as ordinary lives go on. The director stages this scenario with a controlled ferocity, examining how institutions and individuals fracture under the weight of the unthinkable.
Released simultaneously in theaters and on Netflix, the film aims for both maximum reach and immediacy. Beneath the warning is the specter of our current US president, whose inexperience (and sensibility) would render him incapable of a reasoned response to such a situation. As Idris Elba’s president declares, moments after learning he must respond: “It’s like we all built a house full of dynamite — making all these bombs and all these plans, the walls just ready to blow. But we just kept on living in it.” The fine cast also features Tracy Letts, Rebecca Ferguson, Jared Harris, Jason Clark, and Anthony Ramos