A nuclear missile is headed toward America — toward the Midwest, specifically — and there's only 19 minutes to impact.

That's the insanely urgent doomsday scenario set up in director Kathryn Bigelow's electrifying "A House of Dynamite," a hyper tense, tightly laced thriller that says all the preparations and supposed safety nets our leaders have in place might not make a lick of difference if a nuke is hurtling through the air in our direction and there's only minutes to go until impact.

Bigelow, the crackerjack filmmaker behind "Zero Dark Thirty" and 2017's "Detroit," takes us inside the fluorescent-lit control centers and situation rooms as officials learn of the strike and quickly work to gather every piece of intel they can. What is protocol? How effective would an evacuation order be? That wide Midwest target is eventually narrowed down precisely to Chicago. Deep breath, and... yikes.

Among those sending, receiving and executing orders are a series of high-ranking government officials, including senior Air Force officer General Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts), Secretary of Defense Reid Baker (Jared Harris), White House senior officer Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) and the POTUS (Idris Elba).

Their job is to strike down the missile, the science of which is compared to "hitting a bullet with a bullet"; to ascertain who shot the missile; and to weigh the effectiveness of a counterstrike, all while millions of lives hang in the balance and the clock is tick, tick, ticking away.

With less than 20 minutes to impact and events unfolding at a real-time clip, you might think the better part of the movie is spent in the aftermath of the detonation. But Bigelow, directing from a script by Noah Oppenheim, plays back the full countdown from three different angles, getting different perspectives in each, broadening the scope of the story while keeping her focus tightly fixed on the main players and those in their immediate radius.

What emerges is a frightening portrait of our vulnerability in the face of sheer horror and the fallibility of our leadership structure in a time of crisis. It's a sweaty palms stress test for our uneasy times, ready to detonate at a moment's notice.

———

'A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE'

Grade: B+

MPA rating: R (for language)

Running time: 1:52

How to watch: Netflix

———

©2025 The Detroit News. Visit detroitnews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.