New Thriller with a Dire Message Now on Netflix October 26, 2025

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Kathryn Bigelow, Oscar-winning director of “The Hurt Locker” and the acclaimed and controversial  “Zero Dark Thirty,” two films about the darkness of modern battle, is now targeting a war she grew up with as a 73-year-old filmmaker: the Cold War and its nuclear legacy. 

“A House of Dynamite” spent a week in the theaters and is now showing on Netflix, free with a subscription. The reviews are making page one, that’s how welcome, with angst, moviegoers are to see strong films with a message — and one that relies fully, as this one does, on the facts of what the US has in its nuclear arsenal. And what it doesn’t have, which is her underlying message. 

Could we survive, could our multi-billion-dollar defenses defend against an unidentified, single nuclear weapon on its way to Chicago?

“A House of Dynamite” covers 18 minutes in the life of the men and women who would be our defenders in a nuclear assault, from the young “missileers,” who detect the weapon in flight, up the chain of command from the White House Situation Room to the National Security Advisor, the military officer carrying “the football” with the code for detonation; and the president, played by Idris Elba. Elba is Everyman in his portrayal of the last in line to unleash, or not, nuclear Armageddon.

Not since “Fail Safe,” released in 1964, have we had a realistic docudrama on the vagaries of preventing a nuclear war or rogue strike. “The House of Dynamite” is worth the double-dose of angst it creates.