Bestowed upon a select group, the title of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the beneficial side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this prism, auteurist critics may feel obliged to justify even their least successful efforts. (The reasoning is that a lackluster film by a Noted Film-maker is still more valuable than the best work of a commercial director.) One downside is that such accolades can restrict a creative to a tight creative box, searching only for material worthy of a Esteemed Director; another is that the disappointment when a project falls flat is significantly amplified. A prominent test case has made its way to Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if texts from cinephile pals are any indication – seems assured of only one recognition this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
Examining Bigelow's Career Path
To understand why the film has underwhelmed so, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow built her reputation with a series of broad, agile genre films: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the classic action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A sharper insight of her direction of travel came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an intense sci-fi suspense story, shaped by the Rodney King case, which also served as a cautionary fable about the risks of escaping from the real world to take cover in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, now preparing the release of Avatar 3.) Yet post-2001, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her the United States – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed America’s then-recent misadventures in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the summer of Charlottesville, entered into a heated debate with the country’s deep-seated legacy of racism.
One can appreciate why a director with this background might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who scripted Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the streamer would enthusiastically stump for a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One concept for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)
The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses
Dynamite is at its strongest early on, depicting in near real-time the 19 minutes in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific region by unknown parties is spotted on the radars of a American military installation in Alaska and flagged to the executive briefing area, heading for what everyone learns is its objective: central Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while engaging in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re left pondering where this feature-length movie can possibly proceed once the timer reaches zero.
The answer – and this is where the letdowns start – is back to the beginning: the film later moves between the perspectives of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene glimpsed or heard only in passing. Structurally, the film can’t develop: it’s a two-hour movie with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel multiple times, each repetition layering on moot procedural points while moving all parties toward the dreaded big bang. Prior Bigelow films had a tight grip on action and consequence; her best films as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the inciting incident is also the endgame; the narrative captivates at the exact moment the film fades to black. The figures are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for different reasons.
Visual and Thematic Shortcomings
While the plot cycles in diminishing returns, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve ample time to reflect on the negative impact platform financing has had on the visual style of American cinema. Even on the large screen, Dynamite appeared as dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing evoking 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases recycling the same sets, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist fades away, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that initial segment as perhaps an additional of this director’s tough-minded working women, clocks off early, so yet again it’s left to a cabal of frowning men to try to stop doomsday. The energy Bigelow brought to her pulpier breakthrough films disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the artist felt she had to curb her risk-taking, but a script this talky required some balancing visual flair.
Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts
The fear A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t global eradication, but a artist's anxiety of being considered inadequate; stiffening and virtually solidifying as it unfolds, it’s understandable the film should have been eclipsed by recent, recontextualising events. What this screenplay assumes is that those occupying positions of operational authority would be qualified professionals, fundamentally diligent and that the greatest danger to Chicago in late 2025 would come from an origin beyond the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their moment, Dynamite – the first of this director’s newer films to fall in the space between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime clawing futilely outdated. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the stray rocket first appears on sensors, the nation Bigelow’s film depicts has been destroyed utterly.
