Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the mantle of Noted Film-maker can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the positive side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this prism, film scholars may feel obliged to justify even their weakest efforts. (The rationale is that a subpar film by a Prestigious Auteur is still superior to the best work of a commercial director.) One downside is that such accolades can limit a creative to a very narrow courtyard, searching only for material suitable for a Noted Film-maker; another is that the frustration when a project doesn't spark is even more pronounced. A notable instance has recently arrived on Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if texts from cinephile pals are any indication – seems assured of only one honor this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
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 broad, agile genre films: biker flick The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the classic Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. Clearer indication of her direction of travel came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an intense near-future drama, shaped by the Rodney King case, which also served as a cautionary fable about the dangers of rejecting actuality to find refuge in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her the United States – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled America’s recent military engagements in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the summer of Charlottesville, entered into a contentious dialogue with the country’s extended past of racism.
It's easy to see why a film-maker on this trajectory might be interested in Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who penned Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the platform would vigorously back a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One idea 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 brief period in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific region by unknown parties is detected by sensors of a US army base in Alaska and reported to the presidential command center, en route towards what everyone learns is its destination: downtown Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while engaging in an compelling countdown strategy: we’re made to question where this feature-length movie can possibly proceed once the timer reaches zero.
The response – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is back to the beginning: the film subsequently shuffles between the viewpoints of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ general, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the prologue glimpsed or heard only in passing. From a narrative standpoint, the film is unable to advance: it’s a lengthy film with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel repeatedly, every iteration adding on contested bureaucratic steps while moving all parties toward the feared explosion. Earlier Bigelow films had a strong control on cause-and-effect; her finest achievements as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the triggering event is also the concluding action; the narrative captivates at the very second the film fades to black. The figures are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for separate causes.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the scenario revolves in shrinking loops, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve ample time to ponder the harmful influence platform financing has had on the look of U.S. films. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite appeared as dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content employing identical backdrops, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist fades away, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that initial segment as potentially another of this director’s tough-minded working women, exits prematurely, so once more it’s up to a collection of stern males to try to avert global catastrophe. The verve Bigelow infused into her more genre-oriented early hits is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the artist felt she had to curb her bold choices, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some offsetting dramatic intensity.
Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts
The fear A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a artist's anxiety of being thought unworthy; becoming rigid and almost petrifying as it unfolds, it’s understandable the film should have been eclipsed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this script takes for granted is that those occupying positions of operational authority would be qualified professionals, deeply responsible and that the biggest threat to Chicago in the latter part of 2025 would come from an origin beyond the White House. Where previous Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their moment, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s recent works to fall somewhere between oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends two listless hours scrabbling around hopelessly out of touch. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the rogue missile first appears on sensors, the United States Bigelow’s film describes has been destroyed utterly.
