A House of Dynamite delivers a straightforward message: nuclear war is insanity. Stockpiles of nuclear weapons are insanity. We live in a house stuffed to the rafters with dynamite and we choose to keep living in it.

A House of Dynamite begins with the detection of a missile launch. It apparently was launched from a submarine and nobody can tell if it was China, Russia, or Korea who launched it. But it’s headed for Chicago.

The 18 minutes it takes for the missile to fly toward the American target are repeated over and over from various response teams and in various situation rooms. With nail biting, frantic, terrifying, fast paced action, every arm of government works to decide what to do.

The story is supposed to be set in 2025, but it’s not the 2025 we live in. The film’s various military officers, department heads, security people, and the POTUS were all top notch people good at their jobs. I dread the thought of the bunch of incompetent dunderheads who are in office now taking on a decision like this one.

Every part was filled with an outstanding actor, whether they spoke 100 lines or 2 lines. A few of those were POTUS (Idris Elba), The First Lady (Renée Elise Goldsberry), Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson), Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington (Gabriel Basso) and his wife Lily (Brittany O’Grady), Secretary of Defense Reid Baker (Jared Harris) and his daughter in Chicago (Kaitlyn Dever), General Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts), Major Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos) at a base Alaska where the anti-missile launch came from, a woman from FEMA (Moses Ingram), Korean military expert Ana Park (Greta Lee), and Admiral Mark Miller (Jason Clarke).

It took me a minute to realize how the movie was structured. The same crucial minutes were shown again and again but in different places and with different people. All of it was aimed straight at the POTUS, the one who ultimately would decide whether to retaliate or not.

People had to be gathered up from all over the place and brought to situation rooms and communications centers. POTUS was with a girls basketball team at a middle school. Ana Park was at a re-enactment of the Battle of Gettysburg with her son, Olivia Walker had been up all night with a feverish child, fighter pilots were floating in the ocean relaxing. They all snapped into action when the emergency alert summoned them.

The ending was inconclusive. The ending wasn’t the point. The point was the insanity of even being prepared for a nuclear war in the first place. Whether they attack us or we attack them, it’s suicide either way.

A House of Dynamite is a powerful movie, one sure to prompt discussions among viewers. Kathryn Bigelow did a brilliant job directing this tense thriller. You can stream the film on Netflix.