Inside the House of Dynamite: How an ICBM Launch Really Happens

Netflix dropped a Kathryn Bigelow thriller that does not ease you in. 'A House of Dynamite' opens with an ICBM screaming toward Chicago. No warning. No clear origin. Nineteen minutes to impact. It is the kind of setup that turns an ordinary morning into a global panic, fast.

How the movie plays it

Up in Alaska, Major Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos) reports for duty at the 49th Missile Defense Battalion, and in about two heartbeats the radar lights up with the worst possible alert. In Washington, Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) takes point inside the White House Situation Room, steering the real-time response as the DEFCON posture starts sliding down the scale.

The U.S. does what it is built to do in this scenario: scramble interceptors. The Ground-Based Interceptor system gets launched to try to swat the incoming warhead out of the sky. And because reality is not a movie about invincible tech, it is not enough. The film leans into that dread: the machinery of policy, the chain of command, the human reactions when there might be minutes left.

Quick context check: we are talking about an intercontinental ballistic missile here — a long-range, nuclear-capable delivery system meant to cross oceans and continents. In other words, there is no time for speeches.

The three-view replay

Bigelow structures the movie in three chapters that each replay the same crisis from a different room. It is not a time loop; it is the same 19 minutes seen from different vantage points, which gets pretty deep in the weeds on process and protocol (in a good way):

• 'Inclination is Flattening' — Captain Olivia Walker runs the response in the Situation Room as the country slides from DEFCON 4 to DEFCON 2. Phones, briefings, split-second calls. It is the White House view of the disaster clock.
• 'Hitting a Bullet with a Bullet' — Over at the Pentagon side of things, General Brady (Tracy Letts) argues hard for a counterstrike while others push for diplomacy. North Korea specialist Ana Park (Greta Lee) and an NSA advisor (Gabriel Basso) factor into the debate. Title says it all: even with cutting-edge systems, interception is like marksmanship at Mach speeds.
• 'A House Filled with Dynamite' — The lens widens to Secretary of Defense Reid Baker (Jared Harris) and the President (Idris Elba), where geopolitical reality collides with personal responsibility. It is the same countdown, different stakes.

Each chapter ends right as the missile closes in. Then we reset to the start of the window and look again, with new information reframing what we just watched. It is an elegant, unnerving trick.

Rebecca Ferguson, playing a person, not a superhero

Rebecca Ferguson, who has done her share of high-gloss action franchises, digs into an atypically grounded part here: a working mom whose job is coordinating nuclear response. She trained with Larry Pfeiffer — a 32-year intelligence veteran and former White House Situation Room director — to nail the rhythm and calm of someone who does this for real. He was on set daily, and you can feel his fingerprints on how Walker carries herself.

'The roles that I had done so far they've all been characters. And what I haven't done is to just be a normal human being. The fact that Kathryn Bigelow wanted me to play a role in a film, that was enough for me,' Ferguson told Netflix Tudum.

Bigelow, back behind the camera after eight years away from features, surrounds Ferguson with a stacked cast: Idris Elba, Anthony Ramos, Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, Greta Lee, Jason Clarke, and Tracy Letts. It is an ensemble built for heated rooms and hard choices.

Release, reception, where to watch

'A House of Dynamite' premiered at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival, had a limited U.S. theatrical run on October 10, and hit Netflix on October 24, 2025. It is streaming now in the U.S.

Early numbers: IMDb has it at 7.3/10, and Rotten Tomatoes sits at 81%.

Bottom line

If you like your thrillers tense, procedural, and uncomfortably plausible, this is very much that. And if a real ICBM alert ever flashed across your screen? Hope the folks in those rooms are having a better day than the ones in this movie.