A House Of Dynamite Cast And Character Guide

Kathryn Bigelow’s apocalyptic, or should I call it the prologue of the apocalypse, film A House of Dynamite is a very significant alarm before the nuclear clock hits twelve (and I sincerely hope it does not). Nuclear threat is the biggest anxiety inducer for countries with or without nuclear power and is a massive decider of geopolitical moves. However, while etching out plans at the administration about singular taps that can take the lives of millions of people, leaders tend to forget that the people are not just data or strategic pawns. They are human beings with identities, families, and separate, complex, beautiful lives on this earth. Bigelow’s film carries this message through its multi-starrer ensemble cast, where each of them carries the dilemma of being two people—one who is in a position and the other who is terribly, achingly human. Let’s get familiar with the cast and their characters played in this film.

Spoilers Ahead

Rebecca Fergusson as Olivia

Rebecca Fergusson’s Olivia runs the emergency situational control room at the White House. She is the first one to have been informed about the ICBM threat from Fort Greely and quickly takes over the situation. Olivia is a level-headed leader, and when she is given a choice to leave the control room, she denies it. She has seen threats firsthand and leads her team with composure, telling her subordinate that this may be the second most exciting thing about his day, the first being him proposing to his girlfriend.

When we first see Olivia, she is playing with her son, who has caught a fever. Her husband takes over at three thirty am as she prepares for work, saying it is casual Friday today at the White House. She takes her son’s toy to work and texts her husband to kiss Liam for her. When the attack is imminent, she calls her husband and tells him to drive west with Liam away from the urban center. Olivia’s character is the first one we get to see where she is beautifully human, yet she is positioned at the top of a crisis, which creates a grave conflict. The two identities and their clash are tragic, and may one never have to choose between being a title of power and simply a human being. 

Idris Elba as The President

The president, played by Idris Elba (he seems to be fit for a lot of world leaders since being cast as the UK Prime Minister in Heads of State) also becomes one of the people who are fractured the most by this dilemma. While on the video conference at the wake of the impending attack, the President’s camera is off, and he is just the title POTUS, which essentially neutralizes his human identity. In the second half of the film, we see the US President as a human. I believe the script has left him strategically nameless as to how little it matters who he is as a human when he is in the power position to make calls about human destruction by a simple gesture of a nod. The president is pulled out of the basketball game and is in transit for the airlift that will evacuate him to a safe bunker, but while he ensures his own safety, he has to make the call to destroy millions of human lives. He is neatly served with a plan with potential enemies mapped, which throws him off balance even more. He knows how grave it is to make that call as a human, yet how strategic it is as the US President. General Brady is encouraging him to take a retaliation call, while Jake Baerington, the Deputy National Security Advisor, stresses the fact that he is “more or less” sure that Russia or Beijing has nothing to do with this attack. The President calls the First Lady, who is in Kenya—the backdrop with elephants and leopards poignantly shows that it is not just humans who get affected in these strikes. However, the connection breaks off, and the film leaves the president’s decision following the call at a cliffhanger. He hesitantly speaks over the call, stating his order, but the film does not show the rest of it. Is it perhaps off-screen because of its sheer impact in ending so many lives? Or is it because it remains irrelevant what he does? Since a strike is already initiated, a number of humans are going to die regardless. Idris Elba’s nuanced character depiction embodying both the person and the President, raises many questions, leaving us to hunt for the answers in our minds. 

Tracy Letts as General Brady

General Brady is one of the people who is taken on the video conference immediately after the attack is spotted. He is a general of the STRATCOM, the Strategic Command of the US Army. Brady justifies his power position, and his decision, although it may seem inhuman, has strategic importance geopolitically. He is in favor of a show of strength and attacking the suspected enemies’ backs since they cannot afford to appear as a weak country on the nuclear map and lose more cities to the enemy. The issue with Brady’s solution is that the enemy is still indeterminate; Jake Baerington believes it is not Russia or Beijing, and Anna Park thinks it can be North Korea, but no one feels sure. Brady’s decision may just bring the world crashing down upon them, and he will be one of the names that will not appear in the history books yet rewrite history with a cruel strike of the hand. 

Jared Harris as Reid Baker

Baker is the Secretary of Defense who also hops on to this doomsday call. The threat is imminent, and Baker’s brain starts functioning more as a father protecting his daughter rather than his title when the 50 Billion dollars worth of anti-ballistic missiles fail to stop the nuclear missile. Baker will be, of course, airlifted to a safe location to a bunker, but as a father, he makes his last attempt to get Carrie, his daughter, out of Chicago. However, there is no time left, and he realizes it. He calls Carrie for a conversation, who of course, ignores her father’s call. They seem to have some issues going on between them. When she finally takes the call, it is a touching goodbye between a father and a daughter—a father who till his last breath protects his daughter from even the knowledge of the doomsday directly upon them. Baker is then asked to leave the White House premises in the helicopter, but he simply walks off the edge of the roof, killing himself. Baker’s suicide, as a father and as the Secretary of Defense, shows how his hands were tied by the situation and there was not much left to be done. 

Gabriel Basso as Jake Baerington

Jake is the deputy national security advisor who is taken to a bunker to determine the source of the missile. He is young; he was rushing to the office just as on a regular workday when he was pulled aside. Jake becomes the direct opposite in opinion to General Brady; he does not want a counterstrike. He gets in touch with the Russian Foreign Minister and asks them to search for the lost submarine as a show of good faith. However, when the Foreign Minister asks for assurance that his country won’t be hit with missiles, he cannot give him that. He tells him that warheads can fly over Russia to reach Beijing, where there could be an attack. Their conversation shows how tragically compromised the negotiators are, as the decision-makers are the ones who will make the final call. The Russian Foreign Minister says that he will discuss this with the President, as Jake turns to the US President for the final call to be made. 

Greta Lee as Anna Park

I would have liked to see more of Greta Lee, but even in her sliver of screentime as Anna Park, as the NSA Intelligence Officer for North Korea, she plays a crucial role. Anna Park is on a day off at the grounds with her son watching a game when the President of the United States gets in touch with her to understand the situation. After Baerington and Brady’s disagreement, the team wants confirmation of whether North Korea is involved in the attack, and Anna tells them that it could be North Korea. Her intelligence is of crucial importance, yet she is pulled in while she is just being a mother to her son. The switches between the personas, for all the characters in the film including Anna’s, are as sudden as the nuclear threat hitting the ground at an ominous speed. 

Overall, the film, and especially its ending, reminds me a lot about another Netflix release, Don’t Look Up. While Don’t Look Up deals with a cosmic threat of a comet about to hit the planet, in this one the threat is manmade. However, both films feel tied together in their sense of dread and how helpless human beings are in the face of universal obliteration. 

There is a flurry of characters in this film with somewhat limited screentime among a lot of commotion, but each of them performs magnificently, embodying the core dilemma of the film between being a person of power and simply choosing to be a human. This one shall remain quite an impactful alarm in the current geopolitical situation and shall continue asking us to slow down and ponder over where the human race is heading with its arsenal of destruction.

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