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The end of the world is a familiar scenario on screen – aliens obliterating the White House, Apes rising to the top of the food chain, you know the drill. But you've probably never seen an end-of-the-world movie quite like A House of Dynamite.
Set across the 19 minutes that follow the detection of a rogue nuclear missile heading towards US soil, it's a terrifyingly plausible and meticulously researched account of how the world could forever change in a matter of minutes. Looping around, Rashomon-style, to show the house of cards collapse at multiple different levels of US Strategic Command, it features a star-studded cast, including Rebecca Ferguson, Idris Elba, Anthony Ramos and Tracy Letts.
Ferguson plays Captain Olivia Walker, whose team attempts to coordinate countermeasures from within the bowels of the White House. For the Dune star, the film shines a very real spotlight on the precarious place the world finds itself in, thanks to nuclear armament.
"I think it's just too much to fathom sometimes," Ferguson tells GamesRadar+. "And I think the film is going, 'Hey, let's talk about this. Do we think this is correct? Do we think we should use nuclear warheads to keep the peace? Do we think that the President, or any President, or any head of state should be able to press a button and activate a nuclear war? Isn't that a bit weird?'"
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Noah Oppenheim, a key element of the film's power is that what you see is about as close to a fly-on-the-wall perspective of how a nuclear attack would play out as most of us are likely to get.
"What you realize is that the piece is really well researched, I mean, down to a documentary level of detail by the time it got to us," says co-star Tracy Letts, who plays Air Force General Anthony Brady. "Noah already knew a lot about the topic before he ever even wrote it, but then it was vetted and revetted by any number of experts in the field, people who actually held these positions. So all the language was accurate, all the protocols were accurate."
That verisimilitude extended to the film's sets – many reconstructions of real situation rooms. "Kathryn said they were allowed into the situation room for a couple of minutes, but they weren't allowed to take any pictures," Ferguson says. "So Jeremy [Hindle], who is the production designer, I don't know how he did it, he would memorize or document everything, because apparently it's down like the carpet, the color, the fabric, the wallpaper, the wooden benches. Everything was as accurate as you could be."
For Ferguson and Letts, the film serves as a dire warning: a nation like the US can have the most advanced nuclear deterrent system in the world, but no such system is foolproof when humans are involved. "That is terrifying, because now we understand the power that comes with nuclear weapons and the fact that one person has the possibility of activating a nuclear war," Ferguson says. "I mean, okay, what do you do with that? I mean, how is that an option? We retaliate with nukes. I mean, something needs to be done."
A House of Dynamite streams on Netflix from 24 October. For more, check out our list of Best Netflix movies currently streaming.
