"A House of Dynamite": Battling a nuclear nightmare

2 hours ago 2

It's a nightmare we've been living with all our lives. "I grew up in an era when we had to hide under our desks in the case of an atomic bomb," said director Kathryn Bigelow, "so I suppose I was sort of imprinted early on with the prospect of nuclear war."

In Bigelow's new film, "A House of Dynamite," the prospect of nuclear war suddenly becomes an insane reality. It tells of a single missile launched from an unknown location in the Pacific. At first it looks like a test, but it keeps on coming – with a trajectory estimated to be the continental United States.

With 19 minutes to impact, the president (played by Idris Elba) has to make an impossible decision.

Noah Oppenheim, a former president of NBC News, wrote the script, which dramatizes what he calls "the insanity that we would expect a single human being with limited preparation to decide in a matter of minutes the fate of all mankind."

Bigelow, whose previous movies include "The Hurt Locker" (an all-too-real look at the war in Iraq) and "Zero Dark Thirty" (about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden) applied her trademark authenticity to the unthinkable. "It's my responsibility as a filmmaker, if I'm presenting an environment that really exists, to be as authentic as possible," she said.

Bigelow says she did not seek cooperation from the Pentagon for the film: "I felt that we needed to be more independent. But that being said, we had multiple tech advisors who have worked in the Pentagon. They were with me every day we shot."

One military consultant was retired Lt. Gen. Dan Karbler. "Never in a million years would I have thought that I would have been in this position," he said.

Karbler nailed his audition when he opened his first Zoom call with Bigelow like this: "'This is the DDO from the Pentagon convening a strategic conference. This conference is Top Secret. Please bring the President into the conference.' And I stopped there and clicked on my camera and I said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, that's how the worst day of America's history will begin.'"

I noted, "That doesn't sound like something you were ad-libbing?"

"I was not ad-libbing at all," said Karbler. "That comes from a lot of practice."

He was on a movie set, but Karbler took command of the actors just as he once did with the real soldiers at Fort Greeley, Alaska, the front line of defense against an incoming missile. He described those scenes as "super-realistic."

He said. "I have a son and daughter, and they're both missile defenders. And all I can think about is my own kids and how those actors totally nailed it."

In "A House of Dynamite," the missile is tracked as it arcs toward the United States. [In such a scenario, the U.S. would have less than 10 minutes to make the decisions and get interceptors airborne.]

Two interceptors are launched – the classic "bullet hitting a bullet."

"That kill vehicle will go and basically run itself into the incoming missile," said Karbler. "That closing velocity can be in excess of 30,000 miles an hour. I think the movie has it pretty accurate when they talk about 61% chance of killing it."

The watch officer in the White House Situation Room is played by Rebecca Ferguson. Larry Pfeiffer, who once ran the real White House Situation Room, said, "This movie is going to give the American moviegoer a chance to feel what it's really like to work in a space like that.

"There are going to be things that happen in the world that require the immediate attention and action by the President of the United States, and you need to be as perfect as possible," he said.

The president is in a motorcade when he's hit with the one crisis he thought he would never face: a missile inbound for Chicago. "I had one briefing when I was sworn in," he says. "One! And they told me that's the protocol!"

According to Dan Karbler, a real-world president is likely to be just as unprepared.

Asked whether he had ever done a drill when the real president was involved, he replied, "No, no, sir."

"So, if it were the real thing, he wouldn't have a lot of practice?" I asked.

"I believe the last president to have participated in one of the exercises was President Reagan," Karbler said.

So, what does screenwriter Noah Oppenheim want audiences to be thinking, once they've caught their breath? "I want people to be reminded that, even though the Cold War is long over, the nuclear era is not, and that we live, as the title says, in a house full of dynamite," he said.

To which director Kathryn Bigelow added, "My question is how do we take the dynamite out of the walls … without tearing down the house?"

To watch a trailer for "A House of Dynamite" click on the video player below:

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE | Official Trailer | Netflix by Netflix on YouTube

For more info: