Bestowed upon an elite few, the title of Noted Film-maker can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the favorable side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an celebrated director through this perspective, auteurist critics may feel obliged to justify even their weakest efforts. (The rationale is that a lackluster film by a Prestigious Auteur is still more valuable than the best work of a commercial director.) One drawback is that such honorifics can limit a creative to a tight creative box, seeking out material worthy of a Esteemed Director; another is that the dismay when a project falls flat is significantly amplified. A notable instance has just reached Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if messages from film buff friends are any measure – seems assured of only one recognition this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.
Retracing the Director's Steps
To determine why the film has failed to impress, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow earned her laurels with a series of expansive, limber genre pics: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the classic action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A sharper insight of her creative evolution came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an intense future-now thriller, informed by the Rodney King case, which also doubled as a cautionary fable about the dangers of rejecting actuality to take cover in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more alert to this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her native country – was forced on the defensive. 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 extended past of racism.
It's easy to see why a director with this background might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who penned Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the service would enthusiastically stump for a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One idea for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its most effective early on, describing in something like real time the 19 minutes in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific region by mysterious forces is spotted on the radars of a United States outpost in Alaska and reported to the White House situation room, heading for what everyone learns is its destination: the heart of Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while engaging in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re made to question where this two-hour film can possibly proceed once the timer reaches zero.
The response – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is back to the beginning: the film subsequently shuffles between the perspectives of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the prologue glimpsed or heard only in passing. Structurally, the film is unable to advance: it’s a extended runtime with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel again and again, each repetition layering on moot procedural points while moving all parties toward the anticipated detonation. Prior Bigelow films had a firm hold on stimulus and response; her finest achievements as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the inciting incident is also the final play; the narrative captivates at the very second the film fades to black. The personas are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for different reasons.
Stylistic and Conceptual Issues
While the scenario spins in ever decreasing circles, like a bleak repetitive cycle, we’ve ample time to consider the deleterious effect platform financing has had on the look of U.S. films. Even on the large screen, Dynamite appeared as flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork recalling 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases reusing familiar locations, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker fades away, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that initial segment as potentially another of this director’s strong female professionals, exits prematurely, so again it’s the responsibility of a group of serious male figures to try to avert global catastrophe. The energy Bigelow contributed to her pulpier breakthrough films disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the film-maker felt she had to restrain her experimental tendencies, but a script this verbose required some compensatory pyrotechnics.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The fear A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t global eradication, but a artist's anxiety of being thought unworthy; tensing up and practically fossilising as it goes along, it’s understandable the film should have been overtaken by recent, recontextualising events. What this script takes for granted is that those in charge of critical decisions would be trained specialists, deeply responsible and that the biggest threat to Chicago in the latter part of 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where previous Bigelow films felt like intensely involved commentaries on their era, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s newer films to fall somewhere between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends two listless hours clawing futilely behind the curve. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the rogue missile first appears on sensors, the United States Bigelow’s film depicts has been destroyed utterly.
