Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the mantle of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the favorable side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this perspective, film scholars may feel pressured to defend even their poorest efforts. (The rationale is that a subpar film by a Noted Film-maker is still more valuable than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One drawback is that such accolades can restrict a creative to a very narrow courtyard, searching only for material suitable for a Noted Film-maker; another is that the dismay when a project fails to ignite is significantly amplified. A notable test case has just reached Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if messages from film buff friends are any guide – seems destined for only one honor this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.
Retracing the Director's Steps
To ascertain the reasons the film has underwhelmed so, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow established her acclaim with a succession of versatile and dynamic movies: 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. Clearer indication of her direction of travel came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an intense future-now thriller, informed by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also doubled as a warning tale about the dangers of escaping from the real world to take cover in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her the United States – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty broached America’s recent military engagements in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the summer of Charlottesville, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s extended past of racism.
One can appreciate why a artist following this path might be interested in Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who scripted Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the streamer would vigorously back a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One idea for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, depicting in near real-time the short interval in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by unknown parties is picked up on screens of a American military installation in Alaska and alerted to the White House situation room, en route towards what everyone learns is its objective: central Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while participating in an intriguing temporal brinkmanship: we’re set to wondering where this feature-length movie can possibly proceed once the chronometer expires.
The outcome – and this is where the letdowns start – is a revisit of the opening: the film later moves between the angles of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ military officer, secretary of defence Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the introduction only partially revealed. In terms of construction, the film fails to progress: it’s a extended runtime with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section multiple times, each pass trowelling on moot procedural points while moving all parties toward the feared explosion. Previous Bigelow films had a firm hold on cause-and-effect; her best films as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the catalytic moment is also the final play; the story becomes engaging at the precise instant the film fades to black. The figures are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the situation cycles in diminishing returns, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve ample time to consider the deleterious effect Netflix money has had on the visual style of U.S. films. Even on the large screen, Dynamite appeared as dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings reusing familiar locations, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director disappears, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that opening reel as potentially another of this director’s tough-minded working women, clocks off early, so again it’s left to a collection of stern males to try to stop doomsday. The verve Bigelow brought to her pulpier breakthrough films disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the director felt she had to curb her risk-taking, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some balancing visual flair.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The anxiety A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a filmmaker's fear of being deemed insufficient; stiffening and almost petrifying as it unfolds, it’s not unexpected the film should have been surpassed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this story takes for granted is that those in charge of critical decisions would be trained specialists, deeply responsible and that the largest risk to Chicago in late 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their moment, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s recent works to fall in the space between afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime scrabbling around hopelessly behind the curve. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the stray rocket first is detected, the nation Bigelow’s film portrays has been shattered completely.
