Bestowed upon a select group, the mantle of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the beneficial side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an celebrated director through this prism, cinema analysts may feel compelled to defend even their weakest efforts. (The rationale is that a disappointing film by a Noted Film-maker is still better than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One drawback is that such accolades can confine a creative to a tight creative box, pursuing exclusively material befitting a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the frustration when a project doesn't spark is significantly amplified. A prominent test case has just reached Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if messages from film buff friends are any indication – seems nailed on for only one recognition this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.
Retracing the Director's Steps
To determine why the film has disappointed many, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow earned her laurels with a succession of versatile and dynamic movies: biker flick The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the enduring action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A more definite sign of her creative evolution came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an gripping near-future drama, influenced by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also functioned as a warning tale about the perils of rejecting actuality to take cover in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet post-2001, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her native country – was pushed into a reactive stance. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed America’s then-recent misadventures in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, entered into a heated debate with the country’s extended past of racism.
You can understand why a film-maker on this trajectory might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who scripted Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the platform would enthusiastically stump for a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One pitch for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, depicting in near real-time the brief period in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific by unknown parties is spotted on the radars of a US army base in Alaska and reported to the White House situation room, en route towards what everyone learns is its objective: downtown Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while participating in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re made to question where this feature-length movie can possibly go once the countdown clock reaches zero.
The outcome – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is back to the beginning: the film then shifts between the perspectives of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ military officer, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the introduction glimpsed or heard only in passing. From a narrative standpoint, the film is unable to advance: it’s a two-hour movie with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel again and again, each pass layering on debated technical details while moving all parties toward the dreaded big bang. Prior Bigelow films had a firm hold on action and consequence; her finest achievements as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the catalytic moment is also the endgame; the story becomes engaging at the precise instant the film ends. The personas are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the scenario cycles in diminishing returns, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve sufficient moments to ponder the deleterious effect streaming budgets has had on the visual style of American cinema. Even on the big screen, Dynamite seemed uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases reusing familiar locations, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that beginning part as possibly one more 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 prevent the world’s end. The verve Bigelow brought to her grittier initial successes disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the director felt she had to restrain her risk-taking, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some balancing visual flair.
Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts
The dread A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t global eradication, but a filmmaker's fear of being deemed insufficient; stiffening and practically fossilising as it unfolds, it’s understandable the film should have been overtaken by recent, recontextualising events. What this story presumes is that those holding roles of command would be trained specialists, deeply responsible and that the greatest danger to Chicago in late 2025 would come from an origin beyond the White House. Where previous Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their moment, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s newer films to fall in the space between afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours scrabbling around hopelessly out of touch. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the stray rocket first appears on sensors, the United States Bigelow’s film describes has been destroyed utterly.
