Playing out a nightmare scenario with nerve-wracking plausibility, director Kathryn Bigelow’s (Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty) masterfully-constructed A House of Dynamite is a hyperrealistic political procedural that embeds the increasingly tense viewer in the situation rooms and military outposts and presidential helicopters where the action unfolds.

The film portrays what could happen if a nuclear weapon is fired from a submarine in the Pacific corridor towards continental United States, and how the chain of command would respond in the 18 minutes it takes for it to strike a major city.  Focusing on how the morning unfolds for a handful of characters whose job it is to be armed with knowledge and preparation if the United States is faced with a hostile action, the film’s tension mounts to an almost unbearable level.

It’s an ensemble cast (Rebecca Ferguson, Jared Harris, Jason Clarke, Gabriel Basso, and Idris Elba) in the truest sense because every actor is a piece in the puzzle in the same way that each of the roles they play, and their real-life counterparts, have a specific function in the event of a nuclear attack.  Everything everyone does is to serve the only person empowered to make any decisions, the President. Can you evacuate, can you warn, and more importantly, do you retaliate, and against whom when you don’t know who fired the shot?

The result is a gripping and anxiety-inducing film that feels urgent and immediate.