The DOD Says <em>A House of Dynamite</em> Is Inaccurate. Kathryn Bigelow Fired Back.

Tensions are heating up between Kathryn Bigelow and the Department of Defense. The director Point Break, The Hurt Locker, and Zero Dark Thirty has released a new thriller, A House of Dynamite. The film explores an utterly hypothetical scenario—in this case, a missile attack on United States soil—in hyperrealistic terms. But the movie's toughest critic thus far isn't on Rotten Tomatoes. It's the DOD.

On October 10, A House of Dynamite released on Netflix, where it is currently the number-one film on the platform in the U.S. (according to Netflix's homepage). It has fared well with critics, boasting a 78 percent "Fresh" rating on the aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes. The movie follows an ensemble of U.S. government officials and military personnel, led by Rebecca Ferguson as a military captain in the White House Situation Room, who try to shoot down a missile by an unknown enemy before it hits Chicago. Spoiler ahead: Their efforts fail.

On October 25, Bloomberg obtained an internal October 16 memo from the Missile Defense Agency. The memo states the movie's depiction of United States missile defenses being only 61 percent effective—or as Jared Harris' Secretary of Defense phrases it in the film, "a fucking coin toss"—is inaccurate. The MDA argues its interceptors have "a 100 percent accuracy rate" based on testing conducted over a decade. That's despite the same memo saying that "deterrence can fail, which reinforces the need for an active homeland missile defense system."

Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim have, ahem, fired back at the DOD. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published on October 28, the filmmakers cited their consultation with experts ranging from senators to journalists to physicists, all of whom endorse what A House of Dynamite depicts is accurate.

Rebecca Ferguson stars in A House of Dynamite, which has drawn criticism from the Department of Defense over its poking holes at existing U.S. missile defense systems.

"As we see it, it’s not a debate between us as filmmakers and the Pentagon. It’s between the Pentagon and the wider community of experts in the space," Oppenheim said. In name-dropping figures like Senator Edward Markey, retired general Douglas Lute, and the nonpartisan American Physcial Society (APS), Oppenheim says their consultants agree "that our current missile defense system is highly imperfect."

The filmmakers did not work with the Pentagon during production, and instead relied on said experts as sources. Said Bigelow: "It’s the best course of action, to consult with all of the experts that we did. We had extraordinary tech advisors on this film, and then they were our North Star." In an appearance on CBS Sunday Morning, Bigelow said: "I felt that we needed to be more independent [from the Pentagon] ... We had multiple tech advisers who have worked in the Pentagon. They were with me every day we shot."

Should an attack ever occur outside the confines of a Netflix flick, the United States has 44 interceptors ready to launch out of Alaska (in Fort Greely) and California (in Vandenberg Space Force Base). The proposed Golden Dome, which was part of an executive order signed by President Trump in January 2025, is set to amplify existing defenses with space-based interceptors; the estimated cost is between $175 billion to $3.6 trillion.

As the DOD putzes about over a movie poking holes in its integrity to protect the homeland, it's paralyzing to realize why they feel the need to. There are some 12,331 nuclear weapons in the world, all possessed by nine countries. A blast from just one of them would be devastating.