It has been too long. Too long since the innocent children of America were traumatized by TV shows and movies that dramatized the inevitability of nuclear annihilation. Netflix’s A House of Dynamite may have been slapped with an R rating, but maybe it should be a disquieting double-feature paired with Bluey. Not really, but maybe the jovial joshing about death by today’s young adults isn’t just a reflection of the fact that things are, objectively, very much crap. Maybe a little of it is that they didn’t get the bejeepers scared out of them as preteens by fiction about “the bomb.”

Director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Noah Oppenheim – yes, I checked twice there was no “er” at the end – have delivered a top-notch ballistic-based bogeyman that is flawless right up until it isn’t. A quick note: I never do this, but there will be a spoiler section to this review below my letter grade and “Other Critical Voices” section, for those of you who have already watched it or who are rule-breaking malcontents. Until then, let’s do a spoiler-free breakdown of this madcap countdown to kaboom.

A House of Dynamite technically covers about an hour of events. It is, understatedly, a rather significant hour in American history. The military picks up a missile launch that is initially dismissed as North Korean saber rattling or a billionaire’s undeclared rocket-fueled, space-bound overcompensation. It quickly becomes clear that is not the case.

So, what would happen if a nuclear missile from an unknown origin were bearing down on the continental United States? Nothing good! That much is for sure. The film is split into three 40-minutes-or-so segments that show us a “realistic” look at what would happen. I say “realistic” not because I believe Oppenheim didn’t meticulously research the next steps. “Realistic” gets those sassy air quotes because the film presumes everyone involved at every point in the appropriately-staffed government is competent and well-intended. Oops! We should probably permanently be stuck at Defcon 3 or lower (lower is worse, just FYI).

The President (Idris Elba) must weigh retaliatory options in 10 minutes or less. The Secretary of Defense (Jared Harris) is forlorn about his recently deceased wife and estranged daughter. The Deputy National Security Advisor (Gabriel Basso) really wishes his boss wasn’t undergoing a colonoscopy. General Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts) solemnly, if hawkishly, urges preemptive action. Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) does her best to get the right folks to talk to one another. And a North Korean analyst (Greta Lee) confirms that everybody’s worst fears maybe could probably be true.

It’s a lot: a lot of information, a lot of great actors, a lot of heavy breathing (for audiences and actors). It is absolutely and completely exhausting. Uncut Gems is still the gold standard of anxiety inducement, but the stakes there only apply to Adam Sandler. This would be much, much worse.

Without revealing the ending in any way, what can be said is that Oppenheim and Bigelow achieve apocalyptic terror but choose to emphasize collective helplessness. And to be clear, unless someone reading this has far higher security clearance than I would imagine, we technically are. Our agency is pretty limited in terms of avoiding a potential nuclear standoff. The only thing we control is electing a government that would be responsible enough to handle the Very Worst Day ™ in history.

I think we can all agree, on a bipartisan basis, we haven’t done that. Anybody here feel really good, top-to-bottom, about the folks choosing who stands between us and Earth-ending destruction? Because those are, in fact, the increasingly real stakes. Feel free to “do your own research,” but the film seemingly accurately states that proliferation is ramping up for the first time in a few decades. We are ill-informed about that. We certainly do not make electoral decisions at any level with those thoughts in mind.

When Alex Garland made his wildly upsetting Civil War, he poo-pooed the idea that it was prescriptive in various interviews. His stance was “this is where we’re heading,” more or less. It was not “this is where we are heading, unless we act.” The same is true for A House of Dynamite, which simply points to the titular metaphor in which we all live, in which we forget most days to pray or hope that nobody pushes the Very Worst Button ™. Maybe it is enough for the film to just jump up from the desk beneath it was duck-and-covering, yell “BOO!” and run away. But you’ll find out what I wish happened in the spoiler section after the grade and Other Critical Voices section below.

Grade = B

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS

Last warning.

The fact that the film stops before the president acts and before the bomb hits is defensible. Surely, Bigelow and Oppenheim want folks living in the limbo, thinking about what we wish would happen, walking around in the world with that feeling of an uncertain ending hanging over us. It is not a “cop out” in that sense.

But it is a cop out. Because if the point is to scare us, then scare us. You don’t have to show grisly graphic CGI boom-booms. If it showed us a president who, when faced with a stated choice between “surrender or suicide” chooses “surrender,” we could process if that is aspirational. If it is showed us one who chose “suicide,” we could process whether that is currently likely and thus even scarier. If it showed the bomb dropping, even just a brief flash, it would drive home the reality and strip away the hope repeated in the movie that sometimes the warheads fail. That is, sadly, an “out” that too many folks watching will cling to given the ambiguity.

In short, if this is a wake-up call, let the alarm go off. Don’t hit the snooze button. It cannot totally ruin a perfectly acted, breathless thriller that will still leave you rattled. But a version that follows through with an ending of any kind, any option, would have likely gotten an A+ and been the best film of the year so far.

Other Critical Voices to Consider

Manuel São Bento at Movies We Texted About says “A House of Dynamite is the perfect definition of a film with brilliant intent but exhaustive execution. Kathryn Bigelow delivers an opening act of pure cinematic tension, technically and sensorially extraordinary, but its structure, divided into three acts that tell the same story, proves excessively redundant and draining, transforming the suspense thriller into an academic essay that gradually loses the viewer’s attention.”

Dana Stevens at Slate says “A House of Dynamite isn’t looking to revive past cinematic styles any more than it wants to re-create real-life events. Instead it seems meant to be a kind of national-security Aesop’s fable, a fictional stress test that makes the muddy moral waters of our everyday life look starkly, scarily clear.”

Walter Chaw at Film Freak Central says “the bulk of the picture features sub-The West Wing, pseudo-smart politi-banter that includes, among other things, an exchange in which someone recriminates the President for saying, ‘This is insanity!’ ‘No,’ General Brady deadpans, ‘it’s reality.’ Get over yourself, man.”