< Every moment pops in the nuclear thriller 'A House of Dynamite'

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. In the new hot-button film "A House Of Dynamite," the U.S. is threatened by a nuclear missile. The movie, which opens in theaters this week, was directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who won an Oscar for "The Hurt Locker." It stars, among others, Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson and Jared Harris. Our critic-at-large John Powers has this review.

JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: If you were born after Hiroshima, you've spent your whole life seeing or at least knowing of movies about the atomic bomb. From the ruthless '60s satire "Dr. Strangelove" to the '80s TV sensation "The Day After" to 21st century thrillers like "The Sum Of All Fears," filmmakers keep imagining the ways that nuclear weapons can lead to cataclysm. The latest to do so is "A House Of Dynamite," a white-knuckle Netflix movie that opens first in cinemas and hits the streamer itself on October 24. I encourage you to see it in a theater because it's directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who's not merely the first woman to win the best director Oscar. She's unsurpassed at action and suspense.

Although I normally try to avoid cliches, "A House Of Dynamite" literally did have me on the edge of my seat. The action begins when a military tracking station spots a single nuclear warhead, origin unknown, heading toward the U.S. mainland. If not shot down, it will hit in 20 minutes. For the rest of the movie, we leapfrog among the characters who are trying to stop that missile, figure out who launched it - Putin, Iran, North Korea, China pretending to be North Korea - and to come up with a response that won't lead to Armageddon. If the premise is straightforward, the telling is not. The film loops back and repeats the same 20-minute period three times over as we watch different people confront the threat.

In the first, which is about trying to stop the ICBM, we flip between a major at an Alaska missile outpost - that's Anthony Ramos - and the military officer running the White House situation room. She's played by Rebecca Ferguson, who you'll know from "Mission: Impossible." The second part centers on two tacticians, a deputy national security adviser played by Gabriel Basso, who's urging a cautious response, and the general played by Tracy Letts, who fears that caution could lead to America's destruction. Finally, the third part centers on the secretary of defense, played by Jared Harris, and President Idris Elba. He's presented with a menu featuring different levels of retaliatory slaughter and has the agonizing task of deciding who, if anyone, to nuke. Here on a conference call with Basso and others, Letts' general lays out the situation.

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TRACY LETTS: (As General Anthony Brady) These are the circumstances. In little more than seven minutes, we will lose the city of Chicago. I can't tell you why or why we're seeing North Korea, Russia, China, Pakistan and even Iran raising their alerts and mobilizing their forces across air, land and sea. Perhaps, as Mr. Baerington suggested earlier, they are simply and innocently responding to our posture. It is also possible that they've seen our homeland is about to absorb a catastrophic blow, and they are readying to take advantage of that. Or this is all part of a phased, coordinated assault with far worse to come. I simply don't know. What I do know is this. If we do not take steps to neutralize our enemies now, we will lose our window to do so.

POWERS: While all the characters are defined by their jobs, Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim give each a hint of their human dimension, be it the complacent charisma of Elba's president, Ferguson fighting back tears, then soldiering on, or Harris, an actor of great vulnerability, falling into despair when he grasps that the bomb will hit the city where his daughter lives. All are honorable and good at their jobs. Letts' general is not one of those hair-trigger, Strangelovian psychopaths familiar from most thrillers. He's a rational man and baseball fan, trying to do the right thing.

Like that '60s warhorse "Fail Safe," "A House Of Dynamite" reminds us that America's nuclear defense is based on elaborate protocols that offer an illusion of control. Yet once that unexplained missile shows up on the radar, the system instantly starts dissolving. The missile defenses don't work. It's like trying to hit a bullet with a bullet, as they say here. You can't get Putin's guy on the phone. And our North Korea specialist has the day off. The encrypted video conference starts breaking up. Endless planning can't tell you what to do when the choice is between surrender and suicide.

While all of this is unnerving, it's also thrilling to watch. Bigelow directs with a maestro's lucid precision, perfectly orchestrating the complicated shifts from person to person, time frame to time frame. We can follow exactly where we are and what's going on. Every moment pops, from Barry Ackroyd's alert cinematography to Kirk Baxter's jittery but controlled editing to Volker Bertelmann's score, whose shifts keep ratcheting up the tension. While the script's ending is a tad too oblique for my taste, the movie still packs a wallop. And rightly. Bigelow is tackling something important, especially now, when the world's nuclear arsenals are increasingly controlled by aggressive nationalists. Yet it's unlikely that her warning about all the world's nukes will have any greater effect on the real world than the scads of cautionary movies that came before. Sad to say, "A House Of Dynamite" is likely to be remembered not for making us any safer, but for being so darn exciting.

DAVIES: John Powers reviewed the new movie "A House Of Dynamite," now in theaters and streaming on Netflix October 24. On Monday's show, Mitch Albom, whose book "Tuesdays With Morrie" became a bestselling memoir and an Emmy-winning film, discusses his new novel "Twice." The story is about a man who discovers he can relive any moment but must accept the consequences of reliving it. I hope you can join us.

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DAVIES: To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram - @nprfreshair. FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Briger is our managing producer. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support from Joyce Lieberman, Julian Herzfeld and Diana Martinez. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Hope Wilson is our consulting visual producer. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.

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