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In Kathryn Bigelow’s new movie, A House of Dynamite, the clock is ticking. The film’s fictional president of the United States has less than 20 minutes and very little information to decide whether or not to retaliate against a nuclear missile, launched at the United States, from an unknown source. The story is, of course, fiction, but as with Bigelow’s other war movies, it feels disturbingly plausible. During the Cold War, the likely scenario was a war with the Soviet Union. Now there are nine nuclear powers, which makes the possibility of error, rogue actors, or a total information vacuum more likely. And the arms race is only heating up.

Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim make some deliberate choices in

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