My interest in a movie will typically come down to a question that only has one of two answers: is Rebecca Ferguson in it? If she is, I’m interested, and if she’s not, I’m less interested. Not only does A House of Dynamite feature Ferguson, but it has an ensemble that gets more exciting by the minute. The movie also comes from director Kathryn Bigelow, whose work I’m always at least intrigued by. Even with genre films Near Dark and Point Break under her belt, her Zero Dark Thirty might be my favorite of her movies, though one that is stressful as hell that I will likely never watch again. Well, congrats, Kathryn, with A House of Dynamite, you’ve made another stressful as hell movie that starts tense and only gets more thrilling, a feat that her directing and the film’s cast make look effortless.

On a seemingly normal morning in Washington, D.C., government officials notice something strange: a nuclear missile has been launched from an undisclosed location and it will hit a major city in the Midwest in 20 minutes. The heads of all major government branches scramble to figure out if they can blow the warhead out of the sky, who sent the missile, if this could be a false alarm, and what to do if their worst fears are confirmed.

It only takes about 15 minutes for the movie to sound the alarms of the inciting incident, kicking off a literal ticking clock that forces our protagonists to make multiple quick, world-changing decisions about how to handle the issue. The movie unfolds in what feels like real time, but with a run time closer to two hours, I can tell you that a bomb doesn’t go off in the first 30 minutes to focus on the fallout. Instead, the movie pivots throughout the experience to highlight the different reactions that different branches of government have. While the Department of Defense is hoping to be proactive and strike out at their enemies, other branches debate sacrificing a major city to prevent World War III. By jumping around to these different perspectives, it kept me engaged, though I can understand that those expecting “bomb go boom” will be left a bit frustrated by delaying the cataclysmic event.

In addition to Zero Dark Thirty, Bigelow has also delivered projects like The Hurt Locker, Detroit, and K-19: The Widowmaker. In other words, she’s no stranger to telling stories about complex and complicated issues, especially when it comes to depicting the U.S. government, military, or law enforcement. I could see some critics calling House of Dynamite jingoistic or nationalistic, but my read on the movie was less about what nation was “under attack” and more of a depiction of the countless moving parts that need to align when it comes to handling national threats. Characters theorizing whether it was China, Russia, or North Korea who sent the nukev doesn’t feel intrinsic to the plot to determine the origin; if this movie were set in another country, America could similarly be named as a potential threat as easily as House of Dynamite specifically cited those countries. Given that the movie opens with a prologue about how countries around the world agreed to stop developing nukes after the Cold War and have since rescinded those treaties, the whole point of the movie feels like a warning about how close every country constantly is to a nuclear threat. Fun!

For better or worse, don’t count on getting much exposition into the backstory of any of these characters. We’re given the bare minimum of glimpses into their outside lives to make them all feel real, but by the time the credits roll, there’s very little character growth or development; the story is about the missile, first and foremost. As one can imagine, Ferguson is always very engaging and watchable in any movie, but she’s not the only riveting actor in the project, as the movie also stars Idris Elba, Tracy Letts, Jared Harris, Moses Ingram, Jason Clarke, Anthony Ramos, and Willa Fitzgerald. Greta Lee and Kaitlyn Dever even have minuscule roles, popping up to deliver a few lines before the movie pivots back to the missile. As compared to other movies in Bigelow’s oeuvre, we get the least insight into any of the protagonists, which might frustrate some moviegoers, but this all seems to be by design, amplifying the nondescript nature of the crisis.

Bigelow manages to milk every ounce of tension out of the premise, delivering an entire movie centered around what might just be one sequence in a more sprawling film about politics and global warfare. To manage to keep your attention for nearly two hours, even though you’re revisiting the same stretch of 30 minutes repeatedly, is an impressive feat. One major tip: after you finish watching this movie, throw your phone into the ocean, because if you check social media after the credits roll, you’ll learn a bit too much about the real-life figures in charge of making these decisions and you’ll likely wish for a nuclear war.

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