WHAT IT'S ABOUT A nuclear missile has been launched at the United States and the government scrambles to respond in "A House of Dynamite," a new thriller from the Oscar-winning filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow ( "The Hurt Locker" ).

It says something about life in 2025 that Hollywood has returned in earnest to a subject matter that it obsessed over at the height of the Cold War (see movies like "Fail Safe" and "Dr. Strangelove," among others).

But Bigelow isn't here to contemplate the significance of it all.

Instead, working from a screenplay by former NBC News chief Noah Oppenheim ( "Zero Day" ), the filmmaker takes a matter-of-fact look at the governmental response to the sudden crisis. The drama is centered around the Situation Room at the White House, where senior officer Olivia Wa

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