In the early 1980s, during what must grimly be acknowledged as the “golden age” of the nuclear-war drama, the most effective and compelling movies on the subject confined themselves to the effects of such a war on ordinary people. The feature film Testament, the American TV movie The Day After, and the BBC production Threads each perceived a nuclear engagement through the prism of citizens, not decision-makers.

By contrast, in Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite, there is scarcely a civilian in sight, unless you count the occasional legacy media reporter or the spouses or offspring of assorted civil servants. Bigelow populates her film with bureaucrats, technocrats, military personnel, elected officials, and public servants of one stripe or another. The film, released in theaters last week and slated to premiere on Netflix on Oct. 24, deposits us in the White House Situation Room and other citadels of power. This makes the movie at once more distant — because it is harder for average moviegoers to relate to someone on the government payroll — and far more frightening than its antecedents. We could grasp why no one among the farmers, college students, and doctors depicted in The Day After would ever be equal to the aftermath of a nuclear war. But it is mind-numbingly scary to suppose that the people paid to guard against America’s destruction are as ill-equipped to reckon with a surprise nuclear attack as they are in A House of Dynamite. In other words, it’s deeply and worrisomely plausible.

Bigelow is the director of films such as Near Dark, The Hurt Locker, and Zero Dark Thirty. Long ago, she was the spouse of James Cameron, and their track records, judged against each other, amply demonstrate that she is the more gifted and eclectic filmmaker. None of her past films equals, in intensity or conviction, A House of Dynamite. While her ex-husband attends to the struggles of........

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