October 28, 2025 • 23 mins
We just watched “House of Dynamite” to understand the growing controversy over the film’s premise and its surprising ending. For those of you who haven’t watched yet, don’t worry, there are no spoilers in the first half of this episode, so you’re safe until the break… but then we fully go there! We talk about our reaction to the movie’s ending, why the Pentagon feels the need to set the record straight with viewers, and the movie’s writer defending the accuracy of the film.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, there're folks. It is Tuesday, October twenty eighth, and
haven't you heard everybody is really worked up about this
new hit Netflix movie House of Dynamite. We just watched
it and now we see why. And with that, welcome
to this episode of Amy and TJ. Rohobes. Is it
(00:22):
justified folks have really worked up about this?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Well, it's an exceptionally good movie and you're along for
the whole ride. You are waiting at the edge of
your seat for what's going to happen. Tick talk, tick talk,
And then I would just say, as you pointed out,
oh I should save that.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Okay, I'm wondering I should we say ahead of time
this will be a spoiler free episode. Can we make
sure we don't give anything away? Or should we openly
and fully discussed We didn't discuss.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
This before we get we didn't, But what about this
the first half? Maybe before we go to break, we
won't give a spoiler. But I don't see how we
have a full conversation about this movie without revealing a spoiler,
and so maybe we do it after the break.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Okay, we will make sure we give a heads up
before anything even resembling a spoiler comes out.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
That's fair because I don't think you can talk about
why people are upset without discussing the end of the movie.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Okay, so you think we'll start with that. Do you
think the only issue or the main issue folks that
have would just be with the ending.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yes, one hundred percent, And I would say that that
is and was my only issue. I thought it was
an amazing movie, really really good, with phenomenal actors.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah. So if folks don't know this movie House of Dynamite,
I didn't. I saw some of the posters and advertisements
for but I didn't really understand what it was about.
But it's a new thriller I came out over the
weekend on Netflix. Is about two hours long. Described this
way from Academy Award winning director Catherine Bigelow. When a
(02:05):
single unattributed missile is launched to the United States, a
race begins to determine who is responsible in how to respond.
That's yeah, accurate.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Catherine Bigelow of The hurt Locker, a very phenomenal film.
She knows her well. She knows what she's doing when
it comes to making movies about war or impending war
or just the just it's her lane for sure, and
this movie confirms it, and it.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Has all that intensity you expect from her. So in
that response, it's from that perspective. It is fantastic. Now,
the cast fantastic. Itris Elba and he actually plays the
president in this movie. Rebecca Ferguson. If you don't know
the name, you'll know her and recognize her from Mission
Impossible movies. Jared Harris, Anthony Ramos of course, he's a singer,
(02:55):
Broadway star and actor as well. Was in Hamilton. And
Jason Clark, who has been in everything you know.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Oh, I was just gonna say, I feel like every
single actor that came up, it was a familiar face.
I didn't know their names, but I'm like, oh that guy,
oh her, oh him, you know, it was every every
actor that I've seen on every IT movie or show
from White Lotus. Yeah, I just feel like everyone in
(03:23):
this film is recognizable and has an amazing resume.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Even a Angel Reese's appearance and there to throw that
one in as well. So the cast, the way it's shot,
everything is fantastic. Now we'll give more of our opinion
on it, but this is one The audience robes and
the critics pretty evenly.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Splayed Yes, Rotten Tomatoes seventy nine percent, audience score seventy
seven percent. And you know something that was interesting When
you said the run time was an hour fifty two,
I have to admit I was a little shocked. It
went by very very quickly for me.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Did you know it was going to be formatted the
way it was done?
Speaker 2 (04:04):
I did not, So we can tell people to format Oh, yeah,
that makes a lot of sense. So it's basically the
same twenty minutes from the perspective of several different characters.
So you're seeing what's happening on the ground. Basically, you're
seeing what's happening with the troops, You're seeing what's happening
with the president, You're seeing what's happening with the Defense Secretary,
(04:25):
all the different folks who play a huge role in
responding or attempting to respond to some sort of national
security threat.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I've seen movies done this way. We just saw on
this year, Weapons was done this way where you're seeing
the same chunk of time just from different people's perspectives.
I did read a couple of reviews where people had
took an issue with that because you're only seeing twenty minutes,
and you're just seeing twenty minutes over and over. Yeah,
I don't mind it. I like that kind of storytelling,
and this was.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Done well, I don't mind that at all. I actually
think it's pretty cool. I've read books like that where
each chapter is going over the same thing but through
a different person's perspective. I always think it's cool because, yeah,
it's not always the same. Although this one didn't really
vary at all. It wasn't someone's perspective that changed it.
Actually all was the same. You're just seeing it from
a different person's vantage point.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah, I really liked I was done. And the first
twenty minutes of this movie, you're hooked.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Oh my heart was pounding. I was getting chills. I
was in it.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
So a big part of this movie, of course, is
the United States trying to find out who launched this
missile against the country and to possibly shoot it down.
Now the Pentagon has now gotten involved, the.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Actual Pentagon, the actual United States kind of got not
in the movie, but in real life.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
The real one has gotten involved, and Bloomberg, the news agency,
has acquired a memo, an internal memo in which the
Pentagon is essentially defending its missile defense system against some
of the claims in the movie.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Wait, I thought that they had just stopped all eeks
set the Pentagon. I thought they kicked out all the
media who didn't sign a paper.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
And you know what, Bloomberg made the point in their
reporting on this to say, we're doing this reporting, and
we are doing it after we got kicked out, and
we didn't sign a pledge, meaning they wouldn't have been
able to report this had they signed they signed the.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Pledge, and meaning that there are still folks willing to
talk to members of the press even though they're not
supposed to.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
And so there you go.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
But that's a good thing.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Really, you know what, didn't solve any problem.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
That actually hearing that and just putting those two things
together actually just made me feel safer as a United
States citizen.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
All right. So this internal memo that Bloomberg got their
hands on was essentially the Pentagon trying to tell or
give I guess leadership a heads up about some questions
they might get about the missile defense system. And a
couple of excerpts will share here from the top. You
could start with the first one.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
So, yeah, this is from the memo. The fictional interceptors
in the movie missed their target. I guess we didn't
tell everyone that, but that does happen when they're trying
to take out this nuclear weapon that's headed towards Chicago.
The fictional interceptors in the movie miss their target. And
we understand this is intended to be a compelling part
of the drama, intended for the entertainment of the audience.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Yes, they say that it's essentially right there, Robes. They're saying,
we understand this is just a movie. But they go
on to defend it by saying, and I quote, the
system displayed a one hundred percent accuracy rate in testing
for more than a decade. Now, a big part of
(07:42):
this movie is the fan. As far, the best line
of the movie was the guy going off about how
much we spend, which is fifty plus billion for this thing,
and it's a coin toss to only it's just a
fifty to fifty.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
It's just a coin toss. And then one of them,
the other actors, says, basically, we're shoe up a bullet
to try and take out a bullet. That's how precise
it has to be. And so in the movie. When
he was forced to tell the truth about the accuracy rate,
he said it was at about sixty one percent.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
It was a big moment in the movie.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Not one hundred percent. Sixty one percent.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yes, And there are other reports out there, official testing
we looked up that says the test show a fifty
five percent accuracy rate.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
So the movie was actually being generous generous to our
accuracy rate in taking out some sort of impending missile.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
But if you're being told that your tax dollars are
going towards a fifty to one hundred billion dollar system,
so that you living in Lower Manhattan, if a missile
is shot directly towards you, we can knock it out
of the sky, but our chances are only about fifty
five percent. How would you feel you.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Had me until that last bit. I was going to say,
and that's how I sleep at night, and that's how
paying taxes every year makes it feel worthy of that
ginormous effort. But when you ended the sentence with with
a fifty to fifty percent success rate or it's a
coin toss or whatever, that that makes me feel actually
(09:13):
sick to my stomach.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Okay, so the Pentagon wants you to know it's okay,
it's a one hundred percent accurate And now again I say,
the Pentagon wants you to know it was an internal
memo acquired by Bloomberg. But they are saying in this
memo again I'm going to quote it here, but they
want to make sure leadership quote has situational awareness and
is not surprised by the topic which may come up
(09:34):
in conversations or meetings. So they're trying to give everybody
a heads up. You might get asked how accurate is
our system and they're being told it's one hundred percent accurate.
But there are a few butts. We're actually going to
explain how they might be justified with their one hundred
percent radio I'll get to that in just a second. Now,
(09:56):
what the writer, Noah Oppenheim, is taking issue with what
the Pentagon is saying. Yes, because they went through a
lot of research for this movie.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
And Noah Oppenheim, by the way, used to be a
big dog at NBC News, So this is somebody who
has a long history in journalism in a leadership position
at a major US network, and of course is a
writer as well. But he said he respectfully disagrees with
the Pentagon, and we'll go on to say what else
(10:26):
he said. He said, I'm not a missile defense expert,
but I did talk to many missile defense experts who
were all on the record. We just asked them a
ton of questions. How does it work, what are the processes,
what are the procedures? So what you see on screen
is hopefully a fairly accurate portrait of the reality that exists.
He said. Unfortunately, our missile defense system is highly imperfect.
(10:50):
If the Pentagon wants to have a conversation about improving
it or what the next step might be in keeping
all of us safer, that's the conversation we want to have.
What we show in the movie is accurate, and that
was in the movie. We just watched it. Yeah, they
said sixty one percent accuracy, and we watched in the
movie two of the missile defense what are they called
(11:14):
GDIs gbis miss the target in the movie.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Ground based interceptors is what they call them, and we
do have them in real life. They're kept in California
and in Alaska, most of them in Alaska, about forty
or so. But they say these things are we should
sleep easy at night.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Well, honestly, I actually do and have up until now.
That is the truth. I mean, it was my understanding
that it was one hundred percent accurate, or that there's
no way if we saw it coming in that we
would miss it.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Did the movie scare you, Yes, it did.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
It scared me, especially in these times. Look, this is
everyone probably says that no matter what decade they lived in.
But I feel like the tensions, like just what we're
seeing in Ukraine, what we're seeing in Russia, what we're
seeing in the Middle East, and just even when we
do feel like we make progress, it's one step forward,
(12:16):
two steps back, and every rhetoric just seems to be
at its height, and words are weapons. And I just
I think everyone's a little bit on edge with the
tension and the division that we not only have in
the world but in our own country.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, it feels unstable. So yet I think the movie
is timely and that it really really strikes a nerve.
But stay with us, folks will tell you why so
many folks are upset, in particular about the ending, and yes,
spoiler alert, we will be talking about exactly what happened.
(12:52):
Also why the Pentagon in arguing that the missile defense
system is one hundred percent correct. Why they might actually
have an argument.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Say here, continuing our conversation about the movie that everyone
is talking about, the Netflix film House of Dynamite. It
dropped over the weekend. It's been number one on Netflix
(13:20):
and certainly a huge topic of conversation among folks who've
seen it. Certainly folks online and a lot of people
are just downright pissed at how this thing ended.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Well, what do you want? We want a nice little
bow on it. There's supposed to be an ending, a
conclusion to the story, and I guess we we watch
a story and then we don't know how the story ends.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
That's annoying. Think about it from the beginning of when
you're a kid, like your parents are reading you a
bedtime book, they just don't tell you the ending. That's
you're not going to go to sleep. You're going to
be staying up all night thinking about how it ended,
or how it should have ended, or what you wish
the author had written. I mean, maybe that's the intention,
and I get that from a creative standpoint. However, I
do think you kind of got out of actually having
(14:09):
to give us an ending, and somehow I feel like
you kind of weaseled your way out of actually giving
us a story that has a beginning, a middle, and
an end.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Okay, obviously, I know you're not suggesting that there was
a weasling out you're talking about in general, I know
you're not talking.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
About No, of course, like that, Academy Award winning directors
can know much more about art than I do. Yes, I.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
I didn't know what was going to happen and why
people were so upset, and then I took a beat.
I took a beat, and before the credits were even
done rolling, I'm like, ah, maybe she was making a
bigger point than I was giving the movie credit for.
So yes, FELK, we're gonna spoiler one more time if
you want to hop out. But this is going to
be a full spoiler alert here now. But the movie
(14:56):
goes through twenty minutes of time, and there are different
perspectives of different people who are involved in trying to
figure out where this missile is coming from and how
to keep it from hitting the United.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
States and how to respond.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
And the response what there should be. So there's twenty
minutes of time is what we get because they have
the countdown of when the thing is going to hit Chicago,
and it's going to hit in twenty minutes. So you
see the same twenty minutes over and over and over again,
and then at the end, when the twenty minutes is out,
(15:34):
on the last segment, we have no idea what happened
to Chicago, and no idea what decision the president.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Made cut to black and look. I understand the conversation
that we're now having, and honestly, even the frustration or
downright anger that some people feel after having invested two
hours of their time into this movie to want a conclusion.
Perhaps that's getting us to talk about it even more.
And that's exactly what Catherine Bigelow and Noah Oppenheim were
(16:03):
hoping for. And if that was the intention, bravo. You
all did an excellent job, and the whole entire movie
was phenomenal. I just feel cheated out of the resolution,
and I understand that that's probably how a lot of
people feel. Because those twenty minutes were so intense, and
then you had to relive them through different perspectives, you
(16:24):
are even more invested, like you can't wait, like you
had to wait, then you had to wait again, then
you had to wait again, and now finally you're gonna
find out what happened, and you never do. That is
deeply unsatisfying.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Simply, I am with you, simply a you're speaking as
a moviegoer. You're sitting down as a person who wants
to be entertained. And stories do follow a very simple.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Arc, and that is why people have a Netflix subscription
because they want to be entertained.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Okay, but okay, I am with you sitting as just
some by as a moviegoer. I respect it now as
a citizen, possibly because maybe the conversation, which is a
worthy one, about the building up and our stance as well.
We need to build up our we needed to be
(17:17):
a deterrent our military stance and all of these complicated
systems we have. They even had a mention in there
to possibly an AI launching this thing. So it scares
the hell out of you. And think about where we
are with our military positioning. Why do we need to
see the end of the story, need to know whether
there's a disaster or not to change how we view
(17:41):
our military stance in this country.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Look, I hear you on another level, on a political level,
on a yes, but on an entertainment level, you need this,
I thought cheated, But I understand, like in my head
as I was, because I didn't know how it was
going to end. I just knew people were upset about it.
I actually thought that they were going to have Chicago
(18:05):
actually go up in smoke, and I thought, Wow, they're
really going to do this because people are upset. It
actually didn't dawn on me that I wasn't going to
find out what happened until right towards the end that
I thought, you know what, they're not going to show it.
They're not going to tell us what happened. And I
even thought they would tell us what happened and not
(18:26):
show it because it would be too hard to watch. Look,
I was actually thinking from the perspective of creating this
movie and how real it seemed. It was too real.
It felt too real too where we are it was
going to be, like I can't imagine how actually frightening
it would have been had they shown something catastrophic happening.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Yeah, the build up to this, and I was actually
reading Robes and again to your point of cutting off
seeing the cat the catastrophe of Chicago, there is like
a couple of devastating family scenes in this movie, like
they are gutting to see. And the consultant that worked
(19:11):
with them on the movie was essentially doing an interview
saying what they got right and what they got wrong.
They say, yeah, they some of the mechanics of it.
They say, yeah, we a is in the military. We
see the mechanics. Okay, emergency because we do these drills.
We do all these drills. They say. What they nailed
is what we don't get to see is a human
reaction to having to do a real time. He said,
(19:31):
we never had to do that because we just did drills.
He said he really appreciated seeing this guy's a young father,
this person has a daughter in this city. That he said,
they really appreciated that they nailed that.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Part yeah, and part of you were yelling at the TV,
get it together. You're first line of defense if you
can't keep emotion out of this and nothing's gonna save us,
No one's gonna save us. But I was like, honestly,
those are human beings who have jobs, and yes they
understand how important they are, but they've never really been
put to the test of where you know information and
(20:05):
your loved ones are potentially absolutely in the line of fire.
What do you do? Do you break down? Do you
put in that phone call, do you try to get
somebody out? Do you yeah, all of those things? Do
you basically do you leave the oath behind in a way,
or at least, you know, fudge the rules a little
bit because you're a human being trying to get one
(20:27):
last call to mom or tell your daughter you love them,
or even try to get somebody out of harm's way.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
I get it. I get it. If I were in
their precision, I'd probably do the same thing. But I'm
speaking from the perspective of someone who is living in
Chicago and the people in charge of whether or not
I am going to get hit with a nuclear winter.
I don't want them stepping out in the hallway.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
And breaking down crying.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
I don't want it. I need eyes front, I need
focus right now for people. So that is where I
was coming from.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
That's where your perspective was. You're like, stop it with
the tears thrown man crying.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
I did not say that.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
You didn't, but you were thinking it.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
I know you given me as much as I cried. Anyway, Folks,
check the movie out. It is that first twenty minute.
Oh my god, all we had to do is tell
you to watch the first twenty and you're hooked. You
ever watched the rest?
Speaker 2 (21:21):
It's intense, And look, I do think all jokes aside
and my feeling of dissatisfaction at the end, it was
still such a good movie to watch, and it was
a thought provoking movie. And the fact that the Pentagon
even felt the need to respond and send out a
memo and actually prepare for their response to what is
real and what is not is actually fascinating in and
(21:42):
of itself.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Oh well, goodness, I forgot to answer the question why
the Pentagon might be right? Yes, with the experts tell you,
there's no way if a missile is coming towards the
United States that we're just going to shoot one missile
back at it. Like you said, bullet hit in a bullet,
it would be like four bullets trying to hit that
other boat. They would, they would, so they might have
(22:02):
one hundred percent success rate when they fire multiple interceptors
at it.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Okay, that's okay, But we haven't had to test that,
have we not, or I mean, obviously real.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Time no over the United States?
Speaker 2 (22:16):
No, right, yes, so that that is a fascinating thing
to consider and scary as as it gets. But I
will say it was interesting hearing those percentages and then
you were looking up in real time because when they
talked about we only would send up The reason why
they defended in the movie only sending up two different
gbis was that they said, we only have fifty and
(22:39):
if we're under attack and there are more of these
to come, we have to save what we have. Basically,
we can't save Chicago because we have to save the
rest of America in case there are more. That didn't
seem totally plausible to me. It feels like we would
have done everything we could to save ten million people.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Oh thank god I wasn't mobile. I mean I have
been taking the time.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
If it was DC, they would have thrown off.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Oh oh god, you make a good point. And they
make some of those political points in the movie. There's
very little humor, but the couple of lines they have
they absolutely do nail. And I loved idests alway as
the president. He was cool.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Everybody was so good. I thought it was an excellent movie.
Highly recommend And yeah, I would love to hear what
you all think about the ending as well after you've watched,
but thank you for listening to us. We appreciate you
as always. I made me Robock alongside DJ Holmes. We'll
talk to you soon.
Hey, there're folks. It is Tuesday, October twenty eighth, and
haven't you heard everybody is really worked up about this
new hit Netflix movie House of Dynamite. We just watched
it and now we see why. And with that, welcome
to this episode of Amy and TJ. Rohobes. Is it
(00:22):
justified folks have really worked up about this?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Well, it's an exceptionally good movie and you're along for
the whole ride. You are waiting at the edge of
your seat for what's going to happen. Tick talk, tick talk,
And then I would just say, as you pointed out,
oh I should save that.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Okay, I'm wondering I should we say ahead of time
this will be a spoiler free episode. Can we make
sure we don't give anything away? Or should we openly
and fully discussed We didn't discuss.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
This before we get we didn't, But what about this
the first half? Maybe before we go to break, we
won't give a spoiler. But I don't see how we
have a full conversation about this movie without revealing a spoiler,
and so maybe we do it after the break.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Okay, we will make sure we give a heads up
before anything even resembling a spoiler comes out.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
That's fair because I don't think you can talk about
why people are upset without discussing the end of the movie.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Okay, so you think we'll start with that. Do you
think the only issue or the main issue folks that
have would just be with the ending.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yes, one hundred percent, And I would say that that
is and was my only issue. I thought it was
an amazing movie, really really good, with phenomenal actors.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah. So if folks don't know this movie House of Dynamite,
I didn't. I saw some of the posters and advertisements
for but I didn't really understand what it was about.
But it's a new thriller I came out over the
weekend on Netflix. Is about two hours long. Described this
way from Academy Award winning director Catherine Bigelow. When a
(02:05):
single unattributed missile is launched to the United States, a
race begins to determine who is responsible in how to respond.
That's yeah, accurate.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Catherine Bigelow of The hurt Locker, a very phenomenal film.
She knows her well. She knows what she's doing when
it comes to making movies about war or impending war
or just the just it's her lane for sure, and
this movie confirms it, and it.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Has all that intensity you expect from her. So in
that response, it's from that perspective. It is fantastic. Now,
the cast fantastic. Itris Elba and he actually plays the
president in this movie. Rebecca Ferguson. If you don't know
the name, you'll know her and recognize her from Mission
Impossible movies. Jared Harris, Anthony Ramos of course, he's a singer,
(02:55):
Broadway star and actor as well. Was in Hamilton. And
Jason Clark, who has been in everything you know.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Oh, I was just gonna say, I feel like every
single actor that came up, it was a familiar face.
I didn't know their names, but I'm like, oh that guy,
oh her, oh him, you know, it was every every
actor that I've seen on every IT movie or show
from White Lotus. Yeah, I just feel like everyone in
(03:23):
this film is recognizable and has an amazing resume.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Even a Angel Reese's appearance and there to throw that
one in as well. So the cast, the way it's shot,
everything is fantastic. Now we'll give more of our opinion
on it, but this is one The audience robes and
the critics pretty evenly.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Splayed Yes, Rotten Tomatoes seventy nine percent, audience score seventy
seven percent. And you know something that was interesting When
you said the run time was an hour fifty two,
I have to admit I was a little shocked. It
went by very very quickly for me.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Did you know it was going to be formatted the
way it was done?
Speaker 2 (04:04):
I did not, So we can tell people to format Oh, yeah,
that makes a lot of sense. So it's basically the
same twenty minutes from the perspective of several different characters.
So you're seeing what's happening on the ground. Basically, you're
seeing what's happening with the troops, You're seeing what's happening
with the president, You're seeing what's happening with the Defense Secretary,
(04:25):
all the different folks who play a huge role in
responding or attempting to respond to some sort of national
security threat.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I've seen movies done this way. We just saw on
this year, Weapons was done this way where you're seeing
the same chunk of time just from different people's perspectives.
I did read a couple of reviews where people had
took an issue with that because you're only seeing twenty minutes,
and you're just seeing twenty minutes over and over. Yeah,
I don't mind it. I like that kind of storytelling,
and this was.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Done well, I don't mind that at all. I actually
think it's pretty cool. I've read books like that where
each chapter is going over the same thing but through
a different person's perspective. I always think it's cool because, yeah,
it's not always the same. Although this one didn't really
vary at all. It wasn't someone's perspective that changed it.
Actually all was the same. You're just seeing it from
a different person's vantage point.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah, I really liked I was done. And the first
twenty minutes of this movie, you're hooked.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Oh my heart was pounding. I was getting chills. I
was in it.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
So a big part of this movie, of course, is
the United States trying to find out who launched this
missile against the country and to possibly shoot it down.
Now the Pentagon has now gotten involved, the.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Actual Pentagon, the actual United States kind of got not
in the movie, but in real life.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
The real one has gotten involved, and Bloomberg, the news agency,
has acquired a memo, an internal memo in which the
Pentagon is essentially defending its missile defense system against some
of the claims in the movie.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Wait, I thought that they had just stopped all eeks
set the Pentagon. I thought they kicked out all the
media who didn't sign a paper.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
And you know what, Bloomberg made the point in their
reporting on this to say, we're doing this reporting, and
we are doing it after we got kicked out, and
we didn't sign a pledge, meaning they wouldn't have been
able to report this had they signed they signed the.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Pledge, and meaning that there are still folks willing to
talk to members of the press even though they're not
supposed to.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
And so there you go.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
But that's a good thing.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Really, you know what, didn't solve any problem.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
That actually hearing that and just putting those two things
together actually just made me feel safer as a United
States citizen.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
All right. So this internal memo that Bloomberg got their
hands on was essentially the Pentagon trying to tell or
give I guess leadership a heads up about some questions
they might get about the missile defense system. And a
couple of excerpts will share here from the top. You
could start with the first one.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
So, yeah, this is from the memo. The fictional interceptors
in the movie missed their target. I guess we didn't
tell everyone that, but that does happen when they're trying
to take out this nuclear weapon that's headed towards Chicago.
The fictional interceptors in the movie miss their target. And
we understand this is intended to be a compelling part
of the drama, intended for the entertainment of the audience.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Yes, they say that it's essentially right there, Robes. They're saying,
we understand this is just a movie. But they go
on to defend it by saying, and I quote, the
system displayed a one hundred percent accuracy rate in testing
for more than a decade. Now, a big part of
(07:42):
this movie is the fan. As far, the best line
of the movie was the guy going off about how
much we spend, which is fifty plus billion for this thing,
and it's a coin toss to only it's just a
fifty to fifty.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
It's just a coin toss. And then one of them,
the other actors, says, basically, we're shoe up a bullet
to try and take out a bullet. That's how precise
it has to be. And so in the movie. When
he was forced to tell the truth about the accuracy rate,
he said it was at about sixty one percent.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
It was a big moment in the movie.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Not one hundred percent. Sixty one percent.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yes, And there are other reports out there, official testing
we looked up that says the test show a fifty
five percent accuracy rate.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
So the movie was actually being generous generous to our
accuracy rate in taking out some sort of impending missile.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
But if you're being told that your tax dollars are
going towards a fifty to one hundred billion dollar system,
so that you living in Lower Manhattan, if a missile
is shot directly towards you, we can knock it out
of the sky, but our chances are only about fifty
five percent. How would you feel you.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Had me until that last bit. I was going to say,
and that's how I sleep at night, and that's how
paying taxes every year makes it feel worthy of that
ginormous effort. But when you ended the sentence with with
a fifty to fifty percent success rate or it's a
coin toss or whatever, that that makes me feel actually
(09:13):
sick to my stomach.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Okay, so the Pentagon wants you to know it's okay,
it's a one hundred percent accurate And now again I say,
the Pentagon wants you to know it was an internal
memo acquired by Bloomberg. But they are saying in this
memo again I'm going to quote it here, but they
want to make sure leadership quote has situational awareness and
is not surprised by the topic which may come up
(09:34):
in conversations or meetings. So they're trying to give everybody
a heads up. You might get asked how accurate is
our system and they're being told it's one hundred percent accurate.
But there are a few butts. We're actually going to
explain how they might be justified with their one hundred
percent radio I'll get to that in just a second. Now,
(09:56):
what the writer, Noah Oppenheim, is taking issue with what
the Pentagon is saying. Yes, because they went through a
lot of research for this movie.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
And Noah Oppenheim, by the way, used to be a
big dog at NBC News, So this is somebody who
has a long history in journalism in a leadership position
at a major US network, and of course is a
writer as well. But he said he respectfully disagrees with
the Pentagon, and we'll go on to say what else
(10:26):
he said. He said, I'm not a missile defense expert,
but I did talk to many missile defense experts who
were all on the record. We just asked them a
ton of questions. How does it work, what are the processes,
what are the procedures? So what you see on screen
is hopefully a fairly accurate portrait of the reality that exists.
He said. Unfortunately, our missile defense system is highly imperfect.
(10:50):
If the Pentagon wants to have a conversation about improving
it or what the next step might be in keeping
all of us safer, that's the conversation we want to have.
What we show in the movie is accurate, and that
was in the movie. We just watched it. Yeah, they
said sixty one percent accuracy, and we watched in the
movie two of the missile defense what are they called
(11:14):
GDIs gbis miss the target in the movie.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Ground based interceptors is what they call them, and we
do have them in real life. They're kept in California
and in Alaska, most of them in Alaska, about forty
or so. But they say these things are we should
sleep easy at night.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Well, honestly, I actually do and have up until now.
That is the truth. I mean, it was my understanding
that it was one hundred percent accurate, or that there's
no way if we saw it coming in that we
would miss it.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Did the movie scare you, Yes, it did.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
It scared me, especially in these times. Look, this is
everyone probably says that no matter what decade they lived in.
But I feel like the tensions, like just what we're
seeing in Ukraine, what we're seeing in Russia, what we're
seeing in the Middle East, and just even when we
do feel like we make progress, it's one step forward,
(12:16):
two steps back, and every rhetoric just seems to be
at its height, and words are weapons. And I just
I think everyone's a little bit on edge with the
tension and the division that we not only have in
the world but in our own country.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, it feels unstable. So yet I think the movie
is timely and that it really really strikes a nerve.
But stay with us, folks will tell you why so
many folks are upset, in particular about the ending, and yes,
spoiler alert, we will be talking about exactly what happened.
(12:52):
Also why the Pentagon in arguing that the missile defense
system is one hundred percent correct. Why they might actually
have an argument.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Say here, continuing our conversation about the movie that everyone
is talking about, the Netflix film House of Dynamite. It
dropped over the weekend. It's been number one on Netflix
(13:20):
and certainly a huge topic of conversation among folks who've
seen it. Certainly folks online and a lot of people
are just downright pissed at how this thing ended.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Well, what do you want? We want a nice little
bow on it. There's supposed to be an ending, a
conclusion to the story, and I guess we we watch
a story and then we don't know how the story ends.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
That's annoying. Think about it from the beginning of when
you're a kid, like your parents are reading you a
bedtime book, they just don't tell you the ending. That's
you're not going to go to sleep. You're going to
be staying up all night thinking about how it ended,
or how it should have ended, or what you wish
the author had written. I mean, maybe that's the intention,
and I get that from a creative standpoint. However, I
do think you kind of got out of actually having
(14:09):
to give us an ending, and somehow I feel like
you kind of weaseled your way out of actually giving
us a story that has a beginning, a middle, and
an end.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Okay, obviously, I know you're not suggesting that there was
a weasling out you're talking about in general, I know
you're not talking.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
About No, of course, like that, Academy Award winning directors
can know much more about art than I do. Yes, I.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
I didn't know what was going to happen and why
people were so upset, and then I took a beat.
I took a beat, and before the credits were even
done rolling, I'm like, ah, maybe she was making a
bigger point than I was giving the movie credit for.
So yes, FELK, we're gonna spoiler one more time if
you want to hop out. But this is going to
be a full spoiler alert here now. But the movie
(14:56):
goes through twenty minutes of time, and there are different
perspectives of different people who are involved in trying to
figure out where this missile is coming from and how
to keep it from hitting the United.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
States and how to respond.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
And the response what there should be. So there's twenty
minutes of time is what we get because they have
the countdown of when the thing is going to hit Chicago,
and it's going to hit in twenty minutes. So you
see the same twenty minutes over and over and over again,
and then at the end, when the twenty minutes is out,
(15:34):
on the last segment, we have no idea what happened
to Chicago, and no idea what decision the president.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Made cut to black and look. I understand the conversation
that we're now having, and honestly, even the frustration or
downright anger that some people feel after having invested two
hours of their time into this movie to want a conclusion.
Perhaps that's getting us to talk about it even more.
And that's exactly what Catherine Bigelow and Noah Oppenheim were
(16:03):
hoping for. And if that was the intention, bravo. You
all did an excellent job, and the whole entire movie
was phenomenal. I just feel cheated out of the resolution,
and I understand that that's probably how a lot of
people feel. Because those twenty minutes were so intense, and
then you had to relive them through different perspectives, you
(16:24):
are even more invested, like you can't wait, like you
had to wait, then you had to wait again, then
you had to wait again, and now finally you're gonna
find out what happened, and you never do. That is
deeply unsatisfying.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Simply, I am with you, simply a you're speaking as
a moviegoer. You're sitting down as a person who wants
to be entertained. And stories do follow a very simple.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Arc, and that is why people have a Netflix subscription
because they want to be entertained.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Okay, but okay, I am with you sitting as just
some by as a moviegoer. I respect it now as
a citizen, possibly because maybe the conversation, which is a
worthy one, about the building up and our stance as well.
We need to build up our we needed to be
(17:17):
a deterrent our military stance and all of these complicated
systems we have. They even had a mention in there
to possibly an AI launching this thing. So it scares
the hell out of you. And think about where we
are with our military positioning. Why do we need to
see the end of the story, need to know whether
there's a disaster or not to change how we view
(17:41):
our military stance in this country.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Look, I hear you on another level, on a political level,
on a yes, but on an entertainment level, you need this,
I thought cheated, But I understand, like in my head
as I was, because I didn't know how it was
going to end. I just knew people were upset about it.
I actually thought that they were going to have Chicago
(18:05):
actually go up in smoke, and I thought, Wow, they're
really going to do this because people are upset. It
actually didn't dawn on me that I wasn't going to
find out what happened until right towards the end that
I thought, you know what, they're not going to show it.
They're not going to tell us what happened. And I
even thought they would tell us what happened and not
(18:26):
show it because it would be too hard to watch. Look,
I was actually thinking from the perspective of creating this
movie and how real it seemed. It was too real.
It felt too real too where we are it was
going to be, like I can't imagine how actually frightening
it would have been had they shown something catastrophic happening.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Yeah, the build up to this, and I was actually
reading Robes and again to your point of cutting off
seeing the cat the catastrophe of Chicago, there is like
a couple of devastating family scenes in this movie, like
they are gutting to see. And the consultant that worked
(19:11):
with them on the movie was essentially doing an interview
saying what they got right and what they got wrong.
They say, yeah, they some of the mechanics of it.
They say, yeah, we a is in the military. We
see the mechanics. Okay, emergency because we do these drills.
We do all these drills. They say. What they nailed
is what we don't get to see is a human
reaction to having to do a real time. He said,
(19:31):
we never had to do that because we just did drills.
He said he really appreciated seeing this guy's a young father,
this person has a daughter in this city. That he said,
they really appreciated that they nailed that.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Part yeah, and part of you were yelling at the TV,
get it together. You're first line of defense if you
can't keep emotion out of this and nothing's gonna save us,
No one's gonna save us. But I was like, honestly,
those are human beings who have jobs, and yes they
understand how important they are, but they've never really been
put to the test of where you know information and
(20:05):
your loved ones are potentially absolutely in the line of fire.
What do you do? Do you break down? Do you
put in that phone call, do you try to get
somebody out? Do you yeah, all of those things? Do
you basically do you leave the oath behind in a way,
or at least, you know, fudge the rules a little
bit because you're a human being trying to get one
(20:27):
last call to mom or tell your daughter you love them,
or even try to get somebody out of harm's way.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
I get it. I get it. If I were in
their precision, I'd probably do the same thing. But I'm
speaking from the perspective of someone who is living in
Chicago and the people in charge of whether or not
I am going to get hit with a nuclear winter.
I don't want them stepping out in the hallway.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
And breaking down crying.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
I don't want it. I need eyes front, I need
focus right now for people. So that is where I
was coming from.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
That's where your perspective was. You're like, stop it with
the tears thrown man crying.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
I did not say that.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
You didn't, but you were thinking it.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
I know you given me as much as I cried. Anyway, Folks,
check the movie out. It is that first twenty minute.
Oh my god, all we had to do is tell
you to watch the first twenty and you're hooked. You
ever watched the rest?
Speaker 2 (21:21):
It's intense, And look, I do think all jokes aside
and my feeling of dissatisfaction at the end, it was
still such a good movie to watch, and it was
a thought provoking movie. And the fact that the Pentagon
even felt the need to respond and send out a
memo and actually prepare for their response to what is
real and what is not is actually fascinating in and
(21:42):
of itself.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Oh well, goodness, I forgot to answer the question why
the Pentagon might be right? Yes, with the experts tell you,
there's no way if a missile is coming towards the
United States that we're just going to shoot one missile
back at it. Like you said, bullet hit in a bullet,
it would be like four bullets trying to hit that
other boat. They would, they would, so they might have
(22:02):
one hundred percent success rate when they fire multiple interceptors
at it.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Okay, that's okay, But we haven't had to test that,
have we not, or I mean, obviously real.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Time no over the United States?
Speaker 2 (22:16):
No, right, yes, so that that is a fascinating thing
to consider and scary as as it gets. But I
will say it was interesting hearing those percentages and then
you were looking up in real time because when they
talked about we only would send up The reason why
they defended in the movie only sending up two different
gbis was that they said, we only have fifty and
(22:39):
if we're under attack and there are more of these
to come, we have to save what we have. Basically,
we can't save Chicago because we have to save the
rest of America in case there are more. That didn't
seem totally plausible to me. It feels like we would
have done everything we could to save ten million people.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Oh thank god I wasn't mobile. I mean I have
been taking the time.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
If it was DC, they would have thrown off.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Oh oh god, you make a good point. And they
make some of those political points in the movie. There's
very little humor, but the couple of lines they have
they absolutely do nail. And I loved idests alway as
the president. He was cool.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Everybody was so good. I thought it was an excellent movie.
Highly recommend And yeah, I would love to hear what
you all think about the ending as well after you've watched,
but thank you for listening to us. We appreciate you
as always. I made me Robock alongside DJ Holmes. We'll
talk to you soon.
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