🔗 Share this article

Bestowed upon an elite few, the designation of Noted Film-maker can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the positive side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this prism, auteurist critics may feel pressured to make excuses for even their weakest efforts. (The logic is that a subpar film by a Prestigious Auteur is still more valuable than the best work of a routine filmmaker.) One drawback is that such titles can restrict a creative to a very narrow courtyard, seeking out material befitting a Noted Film-maker; another is that the disappointment when a project falls flat is significantly amplified. A prominent instance has made its way to Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if messages from film buff friends are any measure – seems assured of only one recognition this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.

Retracing the Director's Steps

To ascertain the reasons the film has disappointed many, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow established her acclaim with a run of broad, agile genre films: biker flick The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the enduring Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A sharper insight of her artistic path came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an gripping sci-fi suspense story, shaped by the Rodney King incident, which also functioned as a cautionary fable about the dangers of escaping from the real world to find refuge in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more alert to 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 the United States – was pushed into a reactive stance. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty broached America’s recent military engagements 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.

One can appreciate why a director with this background might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who scripted Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the streamer would vigorously back a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One concept for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)

The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses

Dynamite is at its most effective early on, describing in something like real time the brief period in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific by mysterious forces is picked up on screens of a American military installation in Alaska and flagged to the executive briefing area, heading for what everyone learns is its target: central Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while undertaking an compelling countdown strategy: we’re left pondering where this full-length production can possibly proceed once the countdown clock hits zero.

The outcome – and this is where the letdowns start – is back to the beginning: the film later moves between the viewpoints of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ general, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the prologue briefly seen or mentioned. Structurally, the film can’t develop: it’s a extended runtime with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel again and again, every iteration adding on debated technical details while moving all parties toward the dreaded big bang. Prior Bigelow films had a tight grip on cause-and-effect; her finest achievements as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the inciting incident is also the endgame; the story becomes engaging at the very second the film concludes. The characters are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for different reasons.

Visual and Thematic Shortcomings

While the plot spins in ever decreasing circles, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve sufficient moments to ponder the negative impact streaming budgets has had on the look of U.S. films. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite struck the eye as uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork recalling 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content recycling the same sets, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker disappears, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that opening reel as possibly one more of this director’s strong female professionals, leaves the story too soon, so again it’s left to a cabal of frowning men to try to stop doomsday. The energy Bigelow brought to her grittier initial successes disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the film-maker 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 fear A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t global eradication, but a artist's anxiety of being thought unworthy; tensing up and almost petrifying as it unfolds, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been overtaken by recent, recontextualising events. What this story assumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be skilled experts, deeply responsible and that the largest risk to Chicago in late 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their time, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s newer films to fall in a gray area of neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime scrabbling around hopelessly outdated. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the rogue missile first is detected, the America Bigelow’s film depicts has been destroyed utterly.