Bestowed upon an elite few, the title of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the positive side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this lens, cinema analysts may feel compelled to make excuses for even their poorest efforts. (The logic is that a lackluster film by a Renowned Director is still more valuable than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One downside is that such accolades can confine a creative to a constrained space, seeking out material suitable for a Esteemed Director; another is that the dismay when a project fails to ignite is significantly amplified. A high-profile instance has recently arrived on Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if texts from cinephile pals are any measure – seems assured of only one award this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
Examining Bigelow's Career Path
To determine why the film has failed to impress, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow established her acclaim with a succession of expansive, limber genre pics: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the sprawling undead story 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 electrifying future-now thriller, influenced by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also doubled as a warning tale about the risks of abandoning reality to find refuge in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her homeland – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty broached America’s then-recent misadventures in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the summer of Charlottesville, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s long history of racism.
It's easy to see why a artist following this path might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who scripted Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the streamer would enthusiastically stump for a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One concept for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its most effective early on, describing in something like real time the brief period in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific by mysterious forces is spotted on the radars of a US army base in Alaska and flagged to the presidential command center, traveling to what everyone learns is its objective: the heart of Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim briskly accelerate the stakes while participating in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re set to wondering where this feature-length movie can possibly proceed once the timer expires.
The outcome – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is a revisit of the opening: the film subsequently shuffles between the angles of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the introduction briefly seen or mentioned. Structurally, the film is unable to advance: it’s a lengthy film with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section repeatedly, every iteration adding on moot procedural points while moving all parties toward the feared explosion. Earlier Bigelow films had a strong control on cause-and-effect; her most successful works as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the triggering event is also the final play; the story becomes engaging at the exact moment the film concludes. The characters are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for different reasons.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the plot revolves in shrinking loops, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve ample time to consider the negative impact streaming budgets has had on the visual style of U.S. films. Even on the big screen, Dynamite appeared as uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases recycling the same sets, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker disappears, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that beginning part as perhaps an additional of this director’s strong female professionals, exits prematurely, so again it’s left to a group of serious male figures to try to prevent the world’s end. The passion Bigelow brought to her more genre-oriented early hits is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the artist felt she had to curb her risk-taking, but a script this talky required some balancing visual flair.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The fear A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a director’s terror of being deemed insufficient; tensing up and practically fossilising as it progresses, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been overtaken by contemporary, reframing developments. What this script presumes is that those holding roles of command would be qualified professionals, deeply responsible and that the biggest threat to Chicago in late 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their time, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s newer films to fall somewhere between oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime clawing futilely out of touch. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the rogue missile first is detected, the nation Bigelow’s film portrays has been blown to smithereens.
