Fact and fiction behind A House Full of Dynamite: can cinema anticipate a nuclear crisis?

There is currently no film available on streaming that promotes more conversations and debates than A house full of dynamite (A House of Dynamite). Kathryn Bigelow’s extraordinary new film, perhaps the best premiere of 2025, Not only is it the most viewed title on Netflix since it was added to the platform’s catalog a week ago (in Argentina it is still at the top, but in the last few hours it lost that first place at the hands of the premiere of national production The woman in line). A monumental debate began to grow around her about the disturbing resonances of her argumentative approach.

The public reaction expands the surface of the discussion even further. With the novelty of a rift that also tends to widen between those who celebrate the film unconditionally and those who hate it. Perhaps a broader exploration of Bigelow’s cinematographic work will serve to mitigate the distrust of those who are harsher with his brand new creation, released after eight years of silence (another factor to take into account).

In Amazon Prime Video can be seen Live on the edge (The Hurt Locker), winner of the Oscar for best picture in 2009 (available there as fear zone) and the essential Limit point (Break Point1991), con Keanu Reeves y Patrick Swayzethe first approach to Bigelow’s world and the favorite character in his stories: energetic and determined professionals addicted to danger, usually faced with extreme situations. Bigelow, it is worth remembering once again, was the first woman in history to win the Oscar for best director, also for Live on the edge.

On the other hand there are notable gaps, above all The darkest night (Zero Dark Thirty2012), which was available on streaming for a long time and today is conspicuous by its absence on the most important platforms. We also cannot watch two other key titles online via streaming: strange days (Strange Days1995) and above all Detroit (2017), the formidable (and misunderstood) reconstruction of the racial riots that occurred in that American city in 1967 and its conflictive resolution.

But none of them, not even those most connected to a hot journalistic agenda (the Iraq war in Live on the edge and the hunt for Osama Ben Laden in The darkest night), sparked a controversy as heated and noisy as the one currently A house full of dynamite as the protagonist. In a few days, an almost impassable border arose between defenders and critics of the film.

There is no better way to illustrate this entire irresistible dispute than with the most commented dialogue of the entire plot. At a time, when responses to the imminent catastrophe begin to run out, the president of the United States (Idris Elba) states: “This is absolute madness.” And one of his main interlocutors from the command room, General Anthony Brady (the great playwright and occasional actor Tracy Lettsin a role that already justifies at least an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor) answers: “No, Mr. President. This is reality.”

What reality are we talking about? From the puzzle that Bigelow presents, exposing in three successive dimensions (equivalent to as many points of view) a single story: the forced operation from which different US government structures, instances and organizations try to react and act in real time against the proven threat of a nuclear missile that is headed for the city of Chicago and will soon impact there. The imminence of the explosion can be seen in the faces of those who try to prevent it in a dramatic race against the clock.

The great paradox of streaming in these times prevented A house full of dynamite will reach its well-deserved peak in the cinema. In other times not too distant, a film like this would have had a wide release in cinemas, contact with the public at the level of its creator’s purposes (a perfect story, full of tension and suspense, which finds an ideal setting in a movie theater and in the shared experience of its vision) and the subsequent word of mouth that keeps it on the billboard as long as necessary.

Only a handful of privileged (and awake) viewers participated in the non-transferable experience of watching A house full of dynamite in cinemas, because it was only on the billboard for a week. Argentina was one of those rare examples. We had to wait until two weeks later, with the premiere in Netflixso that now word of mouth would skyrocket at supersonic speed, now expressed in millions of views.

A house full of dynamite It is one of those rare titles that are fortunate enough to appear in the exact place and at the right time. This perfect timing is connected to an unexpected triumph of cinema in recent years: in some geopolitical issues, the imagination of what is told on the screen manages to anticipate reality.

Every fictional audiovisual story about devastating events of global reach released in recent times (caused by natural phenomena or political decisions) offers us at some point a sign or an indication of complete certainty. At least from the general impression of those who are watching it in a cinema or at home.

“I usually start my films with a question, or at least that’s how I’ve done lately. In Live on the edge was: what is the methodology of the insurgency in Iraq and the bloodiest part of that war? In The darkest nightWhy did it take ten years to find Osama Bin Laden? And now, the film itself poses a question that then gives the audience the opportunity to answer,” Bigelow reflected in the final hours in the face of the first signs of a debate that quickly gained ground everywhere.

What is discussed involves the possible truths or lies present or underlying the disturbing plot of the film. How close are we to someone activating (by chance, by mistake or deliberately) a nuclear button and putting into the air a device with an atomic warhead destined to explode in some overpopulated place, thus triggering a war with catastrophic consequences? That is the main question posed in A house full of dynamiteqLast week he traveled directly from the Netflix catalog to the most important offices of the Pentagon.

“It’s about dealing with the idea that we are surrounded by 12,000 nuclear weapons. We live in a highly explosive environment, hence the title of my film,” Bigelow explained to The Hollywood Reporter. He also said that he has been receiving text messages and emails from the most distant parts of the world filled with “some concern.” The film suggests, based on the script written by former journalist Noah Oppenheim, that the current US system is capable of destroying a nuclear missile in full trajectory only in 50% of cases. Dissatisfied with this verdict, the Pentagon responded, according to a report by Bloomberg, that the tests carried out in the last decade resulted in “100% accuracy in the response of our systems to a possible attack.”

What Bigelow is least interested in is making a political film based on a Manichaean agenda, made up of unmistakable blacks and whites that are equivalent to supposedly extreme moral options. We never know who fired the nuclear missile or what the intentions of those responsible were. The reaction is always produced and expressed on a human scale, carried out by a group of characters with a profile as diverse as the degree of their responsibilities. And perhaps in this perspective there is no lack of reproach to the director for adding to this story a dose of sentimentalism greater than that of the rest of her work.

But Bigelow retains (and deepens) many of his great virtues. For example, the remarkable fluidity with which the action moves “between panoramic and detail, giving them both epic and humanity,” in the words of Elsa Fernández-Santos in the Spanish newspaper The Country. And the ambiguity from which the disturbing question is sustained: from what place will we be best placed to face the conflict and its unstoppable consequences? Will a reasonable decision be better than a forceful one? What happens when a politician finds himself at the crossroads of having to act as if he were a soldier and vice versa?

Far from evading the growing debate about the greater or lesser verisimilitude of what A House of Dynamite exposes from fiction, Bigelow decided to get involved in it to the bone. “I’m simply telling the truth. In this work everything revolves around realism and authenticity,” he pointed out by promoting the debate to the maximum. And he connected his film to the future of the crucial START treaty, signed between Washington and Moscow with the intention of establishing a reciprocal control mechanism in the management of the nuclear arsenal of both countries.

After invading Ukraine, Russia suspended its participation in the latest version of that agreement in 2023 (in the middle of the war), which formally expires in February 2026. Meanwhile, the president of the United States, Donald Trumphas just ordered the resumption of its nuclear tests. Bigelow also spoke on the subject in recent days: “I have spoken with a man who will participate in the START Treaty negotiations in February, who has seen the film twice and who wants his participation to have a significant impact on those negotiations.”

At first glance, any serious discussion in geopolitical terms around the possibility of a nuclear crisis appears contemplated in the plot of A house full of dynamite. And the best thing is a presentation of the topic outside of any circumstantial or momentary journalistic agenda. They are archetypal characters (and at the same time with a precise fleshing, which makes them so empathetic) who face these events, forced to make urgent decisions with no possible margin for error. That’s why Bigelow’s films stand the test of time better than some of their counterparts in the past. Just compare it with Unusual Doctor (Dr. Strangelove1963), from Stanley Kubrick.