RIFLE RANGE BOY: A real possibility

A House of Dynamite (2025)

Director: Kathryn Bigelow

https://www.vitalthrills.com/a-house-of-dynamite-trailer-and-poster/

Her previous movies (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty) usually glorify Americans and the US Army in their mission to police the world. This time, it is about violence, but about a possible intercontinental ballistic missile heading towards Chicago. Early efforts to trace its origin and intercept it proved unsuccessful. Neither the US adversaries, Russia nor North Korea, acknowledge launching such a missile. The US defence forces have less than 20 minutes to decide on the next course of action to save the millions in Chicago from certain annihilation.

Here, the story is told from three points of view: the White House Situation Room, the US Strategic Command, and the President himself, each in a different chapter.

The officers at that level usually have a firm grasp of the task assigned to them and know exactly what to do. But no! Unable to identify the enemy, determine how the early warning commands failed, or establish whether the whole event is just a technical glitch, their only option is to get the people into a nuclear bunker.

This is probably how Lt Col. Stanislav Petrov felt in 1983 when the system mistakenly indicated that the US had launched multiple intercontinental ballistic missiles towards the Soviet Union. His instincts told him it was a mistake, and he chose not to raise the alarm, thus averting World War 3. For his inaction, the Soviets neither rewarded nor punished him. He was, however, honoured with a special award at the United Nations.

Even if everyone believes that the entire armamentarium of weapons is under our thumb and is bold enough to sell our arsenal to gain geopolitical advantage, in real life, nothing is. We are walking on eggshells. At a hair's trigger, this life-sapping explosive may be launched by anyone, rogue nations, mad leaders, terrorist groups or even megalomaniac doomsday prophets. All they need is a willing seller and a very fat wallet.

In this movie, all the anti-missile interceptors proved useless. Even the experts could not tell whether the threat was real in the first place. Yet a concrete decision had to be made.

Again, this dilemma was a hot topic at the time when the nuclear arms race was at full speed in the 1950s and beyond. Both the US and the Soviet Union never clashed directly, but used their resources to gauge the other's capability. At the end of the day, it became like an infinite game, both parties trying to appear more superior than the other. The game theories are abundant. The final sequelae both parties worry about as they accumulate is mutual annihilation.

The movie ends without a resolution, leaving the audience to imagine possible endings, not only for the movie but for the human race.