You expect a movie about the renewed Cold War and its radioactive endgame to be dispiriting, just in that “Here we go again/Been there, barely survived that” sense.

But the timing of Kathryn Bigelow’s grim, cautionary and “Don’t come here looking for hope” thriller “A House of Dynamite” underscores the helplessness of it all.

The film, scripted by NBC News chief Noah Oppenheim (!?), arrives in the middle of the Trump/Epstein government shutdown that has no end in sight, with democracy seemingly voted out of our history and the incompetence that dictatorship patronage spawns in evidence all around us.

The last crisis, it was a pandemic epically mismanaged by morons. The next time it’ll be a nuclear standoff with an aged, drug-addled pedophile’s finger on the button.

But that isn’t the administration depicted in this multi-act — each showing the same spiraling events from a different point of view — doomsday countdown tale. Even smart people, many of them with good intentions, may not be able to overcome decades of planning and technology and complacency that haven’t been updated to reckon with modern threats and the calculus of human survival.

A missile — probably fired from a submarine — has been launched somewhere in the vicinity of North Korea. Satellites didn’t capture the exact spot and “intel” can’t pinpoint who fired it. It’s headed for the American midwest.

As the film opens, the machinery built for doomsday prep is springing into action — command centers, “Star Wars” defense sites, FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) are manned and defense and other government officials are yanked off of golf courses or grabbed by the Secret Service for evacuation to shelters.

We see an overseeing general (Tracy Letts) talking about last night’s baseball All Star Game as a vague threat becomes real and response scenarios to recommend to POTUS (President of the U.S.) are bandied about.

The Secretary of Defense (Jared Harris) is in a fury over what is not known and what “$50 billion” worth of “Star Wars” anti-missile defense actually buys you.

Acronyms and locations — “Stratcom,COG, JEEP,” etc. — fly by as Captain, wife and mother-of-a-sick-child Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) tries to calm her situation center staff by playing down the likelihood this is what they think it is.

It will turn out to be “the second most exciting thing to happen to you today,” she tells a subordinate (Malachi Beasley) who plans to propose this very day.

Hotlines that can’t be transferred to cell phones and other unanticipated SNAFUs slow down communication with the Russians, the Chinese and other corners of the world that are responding to America’s response.

An expert/aide (Gabriel Basso) is literally sprinting to get where he’s supposed to be, juggling calls and urging caution as “sometimes the warheads don’t even go off.). The North Korean expert (Greta Lee) has taken her kid to a Gettysburg reenactment.

A newly-promoted FEMA manager (Moses Ingram) is fretting over the “prenup” her soon-to-be-ex had her sign when she’s snatched and taken to a bunker to manage the incoming disaster’s aftermath.

The Secretary of Defense (Harris) has an estranged actress-daughter (Kaitlyn Dever) in the strike zone.

And the guy commanding the Alaskan anti-missile defense base (Anthony Ramos) has just gone through a breakup of some sort. He’s in a mood as they try to “hit a bullet with a bullet.”

The president (Idris Elba)? He’s in the middle of a kids’ basketball-and-academics camp event when he’s confronted with the worst crisis of all, that military aide (Jonah Hauer-King) hastily briefing him on the contents of The Nuclear Football with the FLOTUS, the president’s wife (Renée Elise Goldsberry) on a tour of Africa.

Bigelow (“The Hurt Locker”) brings a seriousness to the subject matter even as she leans back on her “Zero Dark 30” fragmented, multi-location, multi-character, story told and retold out of order tricks. A hard truth of this version of “Fail Safe,” “War Games” or “Doctor Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” is that the third act is the weakest.

“House of Dynamite” never strays far from the up-close-and-personal parade of characters of your standard issue disaster movie. There’s unspeakable horror in the offing and everybody’s got this relative or that relationship or personal “issue” distracting them from the ghastly matter at hand.

When someone says “I can HANDLE this,” you wonder. And all those “Have a nice day” cracks in the opening scenes are grimly dated and not funny. The melodrama is where the pathos is supposed to come from, and it just doesn’t

There’s another disconnect with so many Brits — Ferguson, Elba, Harris and Jason Clarke (as Australian actor) as the admiral in charge of whatever war room Ferguson leads — in the lead roles.

Bits and pieces of it work, but the endless succession of acronyms and character after character with “issues” rob the story of its stakes and the picture of its heart.

And all we’re left with is pondering how easily this could happen with the way world and national events have shaken out this past ten years, and that the bunglers in charge now just make it all the more likely.

Yay.

Rating: R, profanity

Cast: Rebecca Ferguson, Jared Harris, Moses Ingram, Jason Clarke, Greta Lee, Tracy Letts, Anthony Ramos, Malachi Beasley, Gabriel Basso and Idris Elba.

Credits: Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, scripted by Noah Oppenheim. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:52