Editor's note: Spoilers below for A House of Dynamite.
Kathryn Bigelow's new film, A House of Dynamite, is incredibly well-made and features some stellar performances by the likes of Rebecca Ferguson, Tracy Letts, Anthony Ramos, and Idris Elba.
The film follows the immediate aftermath of a nuclear missile launch against the United States, with only minutes to react. The responsible party is never definitively identified, leaving many questions unanswered about what to do next. The U.S. response is seen from three perspectives, told in three separate acts.
The first act, by far the tensest, is set at the White House, where senior staff member Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) leads her team. Attempts to stop the missile fail, and its target is revealed to be Chicago. Daniel Gonzalez's (Anthony Ramos) team in Alaska is left dumbstruck after their countermeasures fail.
The second act is with STRATCOM and an officer there (Tracy Letts), who speaks on Zoom with various Cabinet members and a sweaty, breathless Deputy National Security advisor (Gabriel Basso). The same action replays, the same failure occurs, just from their POV.
Finally, we meet the president in act three (Idris Elba), who is pulled from a meet-and-greet with Angel Reese and fumbles around as he tries to decide what to do next. Again, the action has started over, and this time we see everything with him as he's transported to a safe location.
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The Writing Problems of A House of Dynamite
There are a couple of moments I experienced as a viewer sitting in the theater for this one. The first 30 minutes of the film play out in a taut, dangerous dance. But once the film commits to the idea that this missile is unstoppable (except by some chance of mechanical failure), the possibilities for the finale narrow significantly.
The first act is all about action, response, attempts, and obstacles, and it works beautifully. But as soon as their first countermeasure fails, characters are shifted into a mode of passivity that cannot carry the rest of the story.
The ticking clock is still there, but it's rendered pointless when characters can't do anything but wait. Instead of sitting on the edge of my seat, I found myself wondering how the story would progress for another hour when the DEFCON 1 countdown shows we only have minutes.
Which is, I'm sure, why the triptych approach was beneficial structurally, but more on that in a second.
So, I asked myself, how is this going to end? And what else are we going to see if we only have minutes on the timer?
Finding (or Avoiding) the Resolution
You, as a viewer, understand from the end of act one that only two things can happen: the missile lands, or it doesn't. The city is devastated, or it isn't. The world is plunged into chaos, or it isn't.
As I sat in the theater, I wondered if the film would commit to these outcomes, but I wasn't sure I'd be happy with either. A nuke landing on U.S. soil isn't so much an ending as it is the opening to an entirely new storyline, so where do you stop after that? Alternatively, having it not land or malfunction would have probably felt contrived.
So Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim opted for a secret, third option—no ending at all.
Each act, including the final act, cuts just before the missile lands (or doesn't land). We don't know if the U.S. will launch a retaliatory strike or what will happen after that.
The story ends at the edge of a precipice, which will likely frustrate a lot of viewers.
Some critics are reading this as a reflection of the lack of governmental control in the face of this kind of disaster. Bigelow, the Wall Street Journal wrote, is just presenting us with a potential view of the future without showing the outcome. But others find the lack of resolution frustrating.
From a writing standpoint, we could argue this as probably the best possible option, considering the structural corner the team put themselves in with no time remaining to explore the aftermath. But it doesn't necessarily make for a satisfactory narrative feeling when you get up to leave.
Sometimes, in a non-ending ending, the ambiguity is the point. Consider The Sopranos, which ends on a cut to black so infamous that it still enrages viewers today. Did Tony live or die? The cut to black is the answer. You never see it coming, and it doesn't matter which ending happened because they all mean the same thing thematically.
There are a lot of things working against the ending in A House of Dynamite. We don't have a single protagonist whose journey has reached a narrative close. The question the film poses ("What would the U.S. do if this happened?") is not answered.
Thematically, an argument for a non-ending could be made here. It doesn't matter what happens to these characters because the film serves as a warning about the world we live in today, which is in a dangerous state of stasis that could be disrupted at any time. So what are we going to do about it? We're supposed to feel bad at the end.
Either way, it does take a lot of guts to end a film this way, and it will likely get people talking. If you hope to attempt the non-ending ending, make sure you're not using it as a cop-out, and there's a thematic reason for the choice.
Learn more about how to end your screenplay.
A House of DynamiteCredit: Eros Hoagland/Netflix © 2025
The Multiple Points of View
Refusing to show an ending while following real-time action restricts the story to just a few minutes of action, so if you're a writer, what do you do with this? You have 60 more pages to fill.
In this case, they opted for POV shifts.
Again, the first act of this film is masterful in terms of tension, stakes, and storytelling. It's terrifying to watch the White House and military teams come to terms with what they're experiencing.
But once you understand you're about to see the same thing two more times, the story loses steam.
The perspective moves into the STRATCOM setting and the president's convoy could work; they function here as a way to fill out the remaining runtime.
However, the shifts fail to add to our understanding of the story or surprise us with new twists.
Mostly, it's because we hear/see most beats from the first perspective, but it's also because the narrative refuses to move forward at all. Everything is trapped in the minutes before the missile landing.
In the second part, we see a bit more about Basso's character and the U.S. Secretary of Defense (Jared Harris). In the third, we finally meet Elba's president (which is treated as a reveal). But we spend so little time with the characters, sometimes mere minutes, that it's difficult to feel engaged in what they're experiencing.
A House of Dynamite seems caught between approaches. It wants the propulsive energy of a political thriller, but its premise offers no mechanism for characters to affect outcomes once the missile is airborne. The triptych structure attempts to solve this by adding information rather than action, but information only works when it recontextualizes what we've seen. Here, we're just watching the same inevitability from three angles.
It might be an unfair comparison, but consider a movie like Weapons. Each perspective shift in that film (and there are more than three) gives the audience something new about characters, the plot, and the mystery. For example, we meet Alden Ehrenreich's Paul early on, and he's just a town cop who has a fling with Julia Garner's Justine. But from his perspective, we learn he is already in a relationship, and they're trying to get pregnant. He's a recovering alcoholic. His boss, the chief of police, is also his partner's father. All of these elements reframe how we see him and color the action that unfolds in his part of the story.
If you're attempting something similar, ask yourself, "Does each new perspective make me want to rewatch the previous sections with fresh eyes?"
In A House of Dynamite, the new perspectives mostly confirm what we already suspected. Everyone is competent, stressed, and powerless. That's not revelation, it's repetition.
Review how to control the point of view in your screenplay.
A House of Dynamite opens in select theaters on Oct. 10. It will stream on Netflix on Oct. 24.
