Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the title of Noted Film-maker can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the beneficial side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this lens, film scholars may feel compelled to justify even their weakest efforts. (The rationale is that a subpar film by a Noted Film-maker is still superior to the best work of a routine filmmaker.) One disadvantage is that such accolades can limit a creative to a tight creative box, searching only for material suitable for a Esteemed Director; another is that the frustration when a project fails to ignite is significantly amplified. A high-profile instance has made its way to Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if texts from cinephile pals are any indication – seems destined for only one recognition this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.
Retracing the Director's Steps
To understand why the film has disappointed many, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow built her reputation with a succession of expansive, limber genre pics: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the enduring Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A sharper insight of her creative evolution came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an electrifying sci-fi suspense story, informed by the Rodney King incident, which also served as a warning tale about the perils of abandoning reality to find refuge in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, now preparing the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her native country – was compelled to respond to external pressures. 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 film-maker on this trajectory might be interested in Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who wrote Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the streamer would vigorously back a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One pitch for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses
Dynamite is at its most effective early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the short interval in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific region by unknown parties is spotted on the radars of a American military installation in Alaska and flagged to the presidential command center, heading for what everyone learns is its destination: the heart of Chicago. In this opening segment, 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 head once the chronometer hits zero.
The answer – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is back to the beginning: the film later moves between the angles of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ military officer, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the introduction only partially revealed. In terms of construction, the film is unable to advance: it’s a two-hour movie with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment repeatedly, each repetition layering on debated technical details while inching everyone nearer the feared explosion. Earlier Bigelow films had a tight grip on action and consequence; her best films as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the catalytic moment is also the concluding action; the story becomes engaging at the exact moment the film ends. The personas are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for separate causes.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the plot cycles in diminishing returns, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve plenty of opportunity to ponder the harmful influence Netflix money has had on the visual style of Hollywood productions. Even on the big screen, Dynamite appeared as flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork recalling 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases employing identical backdrops, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker fades away, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that initial segment as possibly one more of this director’s strong female professionals, clocks off early, so once more it’s left to a cabal of frowning men to try to stop doomsday. The energy Bigelow infused into her grittier initial successes disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the director felt she had to curb her risk-taking, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some compensatory pyrotechnics.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The fear A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a director’s terror of being thought unworthy; tensing up and virtually solidifying as it progresses, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been surpassed by recent, recontextualising events. What this screenplay assumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be trained specialists, fundamentally diligent 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 intensely involved commentaries on their era, Dynamite – the first of this director’s newer films to fall in a gray area of neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends two listless hours struggling aimlessly outdated. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the rogue missile first registers on a radar, the United States Bigelow’s film describes has been shattered completely.
