A House of Dynamite (2025) | Three Perspectives on a Terrifying Event
- Dane Bundy
- Nov 10
- 2 min read
Great drama is often about the “one time” something extraordinary happens. Rocky (1976) follows a fighter who, surprisingly, has the opportunity to enter the ring with the world heavyweight champion. Rear Window (1954) is about a man in a wheelchair stuck looking out his window; a boring existence until that one day when he witnesses a murder. Back to the Future (1985) is about the day Marty McFly accidentally drives a time machine to 1955. Few would care about a movie that follows someone’s life in which nothing really takes place!
In the Heat of a Quandary
A House of Dynamite (2025) falls neatly into this formula, tracing a fictional day in which a nuclear missile is fired at the United States. No one knows who is responsible for the act of aggression and when the safety measures fail to stop it from barrelling to the states, the terrible question of “how” to respond is the question up for debate.
Kathryn Bigelow, who directed movies like Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and The Hurt Locker (2008), directed the film, and it is a well-crafted and thoughtful thriller which is cleanly broken up into three parts. Each one follows a different perspective on the same terrifying period of time.
Boasting talented actors such as Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson, the film caught me like a net and wouldn’t let me escape. Bigelow is an expert at crafting mounting tension, and the movie is a perfect example. One reason I enjoyed the film so much was the way it put us, the viewer, in the middle of the moral quandary, forcing us to consider, How would we response in a time like this?
The movie clearly builds off films such as Fail Safe (1964) and Wargames (1983) but offers a unique twist in allowing us to witness the same period of time from multiple perspectives. Judgments about one character are clarified when we see the world through his or her eyes. It’s Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird who tells us, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
So Much Hatred
Finally, if you go into the movie looking for solid answers about what we should do in this scenario, you might be disappointed. Bigelow doesn’t preach to us through her movie, but leaves us with a host of questions. Many reviewers hated the ambiguity of the film (just visit the comments section on my Tik Tok post), and I am sympathetic to them. But now that time has passed, I think the approach serves a purpose, and I will definitely watch it again.
In conclusion, if you’re a fan of thoughtful war thrillers, then you should check out A House of Dynamite (2025) on Netflix and get ready to discuss!
👇 Check out our review of the film on Stage & Stage Story TV!
Dane Bundy is President of Stage & Story and Director of Fine Arts at Regents School of Austin.