Bestowed upon a select group, the title of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the beneficial side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this perspective, cinema analysts may feel compelled to defend even their least successful efforts. (The logic is that a subpar film by a Prestigious Auteur is still more valuable than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One downside is that such accolades can restrict a creative to a constrained space, seeking out material befitting a Noted Film-maker; another is that the frustration when a project doesn't spark is all the greater. A high-profile test case has made its way to Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if feedback from movie enthusiasts are any measure – seems destined for only one award this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.
Retracing the Director's Steps
To determine why the film has underwhelmed so, 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 timeless action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A more definite sign of her creative evolution came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an intense near-future drama, influenced by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also doubled as a cautionary fable about the risks of rejecting actuality to seek shelter in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more alert to this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her the United States – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty broached America’s then-recent misadventures in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, entered into a contentious dialogue with the country’s long history of racism.
One can appreciate 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 wrote Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the service would vigorously back a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One idea for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
High Points and Low Points
Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the brief period in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by unknown parties is detected by sensors of a US army base in Alaska and reported to the executive briefing area, heading for what everyone learns is its target: downtown Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while undertaking an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re left pondering where this two-hour film can possibly proceed once the countdown clock hits zero.
The outcome – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is a revisit of the opening: the film later moves between the viewpoints of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene 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 rehash the opening section repeatedly, each pass adding on debated technical details while edging everybody closer the anticipated detonation. Prior Bigelow films had a strong control on action and consequence; her most successful works 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 narrative captivates at the precise instant the film fades to black. The personas are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.
Visual and Thematic Shortcomings
While the plot cycles in diminishing returns, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve plenty of opportunity to reflect on the harmful influence streaming budgets has had on the aesthetic of Hollywood productions. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite struck the eye as flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork recalling 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content recycling the same sets, 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 opening reel as perhaps an additional of this director’s tough-minded working women, leaves the story too soon, so yet again it’s left to a group of serious male figures to try to prevent the world’s end. The passion Bigelow infused into her pulpier breakthrough films disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the artist felt she had to rein in her risk-taking, but a script this verbose required some balancing visual flair.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The dread A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t global eradication, but a director’s terror of being thought unworthy; stiffening and almost petrifying as it goes along, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been overtaken by recent, recontextualising events. What this script presumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be skilled experts, conscientious to the core and that the greatest danger to Chicago in the latter part of 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their era, Dynamite – the first of this director’s recent works to fall somewhere between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime scrabbling around hopelessly outdated. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the rogue missile first registers on a radar, the nation Bigelow’s film portrays has been blown to smithereens.
