Kathryn Bigelow, the director behind such films as Zero Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker, brings her latest thriller, A House of Dynamite, to Netflix. With a short theatre run before heading to the streaming behemoth, the nuclear thriller puts America in the hot seat when an unidentified missile is launched at the United States. Without knowing who’s responsible, the president must decide how to respond, where to respond, and save as many lives as possible.
The film has a great cast that includes Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts, Anthony Ramos, Moses Ingram, Jonah Hauer-King, Greta Lee, and Jason Clarke. After appearing as the president earlier this year opposite John Cena in Heads of State, Elba stars as the leader of the United States, tasked with the power to err on the side of safety or bomb a would-be offender into oblivion. Ramos is in his third film of the year, having starred in Highest 2 Lowest and Bad Guys 2. As Major Daniel Gonzalez, he and his group are responsible for intercepting any weapons fired at the U.S.
The film takes a crack at presenting how the highest ranks of government would handle a major event. The edge-of-your-seat suspense starts promising, but eventually goes off a cliff due to the film ending without any closure to the story.
Knowing that a missile is heading to the U.S. tells audiences that this is a disaster movie, yet the biggest tragedy of all was copying the film Vantage Point and replaying the same situation four times. After the second perspective is shown, it becomes apparent that Bigelow never planned to give us an end. It’s just the same high-stakes scenario replayed four different times across an hour and 52 minutes. The audacity to end the movie without any closure or excitement destroyed all the momentum that was built in the first 45 minutes. The film is literally pointless.
A House of Dynamite gets a 5.5 out of 10. It’s a thriller without any thrills, and that’s just disappointing. The only reason this didn’t get a lower score was because of the incredible acting. Outside of that, the film is empty and meaningless. Unlike Vantage Point, a film that showed a terror attack from multiple viewpoints, this film has tense dialogue and nothing more. You sit around for almost two hours and get no explosions or destruction. Paying money to see this in a theatre would be a waste. Wait until it lands on Netflix.
A House of Dynamite is in theatres now.
-Jon Jones
Photos: Netflix
Genre: Disaster/Thriller
Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hr 52 minutes
Trailer: Watch
U.S. Release Date: Limited theatrical release, October 10, 2025 | On Netflix October 24, 2025