WAR GAMES

Pentagon Stressing Over Military Capability in Netflix Movie

The real Missile Defense Agency believes the nuclear thriller has underestimated its firepower.

The plot line of a new Netflix military thriller has got under the skin of the Pentagon. A House of Dynamite, directed by Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty) is based on an imminent nuclear attack from a single, unattributed missile launched at the United States, with officials trying to determine who is responsible and how to respond. However, an internal government memo from the Missile Defense Agency obtained by Bloomberg, insists the fictional doomsday scenario in the movie underestimates U.S. capabilities and firepower. It has taken issue with a line in the movie that current missile defenses have a 50 percent chance of taking out a missile. They claim that modern interceptors have a 100 percent accuracy rate and that their testing results “tell a vastly different story.” The memo aims to make sure that agency leadership “has situational awareness and is not ‘surprised’ by the topic, which may come up in conversations or meetings” after the film’s streaming release. The thriller stars Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson. Bigelow told CBS’s Sunday Morning she did not contact the Pentagon for approval when making the film. “I felt that we needed to be more independent,” she said.