‘Captivating’ A House of Dynamite had me on the edge of my seat

A House of Dynamite could be this year’s film to beat (Picture: Eros Hoagland/Netflix)

I’ve just seen the best and most thought-provoking movie of the 2025 Venice Film Festival so far, thanks to A House of Dynamite.

This Netflix political thriller boasts an impressive ensemble cast, expertise in its alarming subject matter and the gold-standard quality that comes from director Kathryn Bigelow at the helm.

It’s also uncomfortably realistic and tense in its delivery of the message that nuclear war is far closer at every second than most of the world’s population really understands.

Starring the likes of Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Jared Harris, Jason Clarke, The Night Agent’s breakout star Gabriel Basso and Anthony Ramos, this engrossing film dives into the scramble in real-time after a single unattributed missile is launched at the US.

Governmental and military teams, alongside the president (Elba), race to try and work out who is responsible, if it’s a genuine threat and how to respond.

Initially, it’s alarming enough that those in the White House Situation Room are dealing with an upgrade to DEFCON 2, the second-highest level of US military readiness, in preparation for a nuclear attack or other major threat.

The military caper is uncomfortably realistic (Picture: Eros Hoagland/NETFLIX) It’s the best film at Venice so far (Picture: Eros Hoagland/Netflix)

But Ferguson’s Captain Olivia Walker still reassures her colleague who’s planning to propose: ‘This is going to be the second most exciting thing that happened to you today.’

This is the perfect example of how Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim drop personal nuggets of information over the course of the movie about the lives of these professionals at the most pressured moment of their careers.

Alongside having to contemplate a large chunk of the American population being wiped out by a nuclear blast, there are sick children, pregnant partners, recent bereavements, estrangements and impending divorces on their minds, allowing for an audience to find emotional anchor points with these characters in entirely natural ways.

There’s also Deputy National Security Advisor Baerington nervously subbing in for his indisposed boss – having to join the urgent video call on his phone as he rushes to the office – while a North Korea expert (Greta Lee) is asked to give immediate advice directly to the president while the booms of replica canon go off in the background at the Gettysburg reenactment event she’s attending.

A House of Dynamite will air on Netflix next month (Picture: Eros Hoagland/Netflix) Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson anchor this impressive cast (Picture: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)

It’s a vast cast of established and up and coming actors, expertly handled by Oppenheim and Bigelow to ensure maximum character development and engagement.

It’s also a truly impressive feat, especially considering the intimidating numbers of official people, posts and units involved in a scenario like this. While you may lose some of the more precise detail initially, it’s not in a way that frustrates the viewing experience.

We are fully submerged in an ultra-realistic suggestion of how the world could end, so, unsurprisingly, there is a lot going on.

The countdown to the likely start of nuclear war is ramped up to from three different main perspectives in A House of Dynamite, including the situation room, the United States Strategic Command headquarters and finally with the POTUS himself.

Each iteration slowly and expertly reveals more about the overall situation to audiences, rather than simply rehashing what’s already been shown before.

With Bigelow at the helm, A House of Dynamite is excellent too at sharing those quieter emotional moments for which other action-esque films are often too bombastic or improbable. Shouting and hysterical tears convey a sense of true panic far less successfully and poignantly than a soldier’s restrained phone call to his mother when he knows the US’s defences have failed.

The exquisite and often unbearable tension of the movie consistently makes you feel like you’re in the room with these characters, before wondering how you’d act in those circumstances.

This extends to the darkly ironic instance when POTUS says ‘I need a minute’ when there are literally two minutes left on the clock before Chicago is potentially obliterated.

The cast came out in style at Venice Film Festival (Picture: Daniele Venturelli/WireImage) Rebecca stars as leading lady Captain Olivia Walker(Picture: Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP) This is head and shoulders above other Netflix movies (Picture: Eros Hoagland/Netflix)

It also must be emphasised that as a Netflix thriller, A House of Dynamite is head, shoulders and entire torso above other films with that technical categorisation on the streaming platform. This is no mindless TV movie-level action fluff: this is a prestige film, acting as the third film in Bigelow’s loosely linked warfare trilogy after Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty.

And as with those two films, Bigelow has such fluency and authority in her storytelling here too – no one makes political thrillers quite like her.

She also makes a bold decision with the ending of the film that may exasperate some if you’ve not seen it coming, but will certainly inspire passionate conversation and debate.

It’s been eight years since we’ve had a film from Bigelow, but as the first woman in history to win a directing Oscar, it’s a hugely welcome return to the type of filmmaking territory she utterly dominates.

A House of Dynamite releases in select UK cinemas on October 3 before streaming exclusively on Netflix from October 24.

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