Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the title of Acclaimed Auteur 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 distinguished director through this perspective, cinema analysts may feel compelled to make excuses for even their weakest efforts. (The logic is that a subpar film by a Prestigious Auteur is still superior to the best work of a routine filmmaker.) One downside is that such honorifics can limit a creative to a very narrow courtyard, seeking out material suitable for a Noted Film-maker; another is that the frustration when a project falls flat is even more pronounced. A notable example has just reached Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if messages from film buff friends are any guide – seems assured of only one award this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.
Retracing the Director's Steps
To determine why the film has underwhelmed so, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow established her acclaim with a succession of versatile and dynamic movies: biker flick The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the timeless action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A sharper insight of her artistic path came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an electrifying future-now thriller, informed by the Rodney King case, which also functioned as a cautionary fable about the perils of abandoning reality 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 after the events of 2001, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her native country – 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 summer of Charlottesville, entered into a contentious dialogue with the country’s long history of racism.
You can understand why a film-maker on this trajectory might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who wrote Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the platform would strongly support a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One idea for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, describing in something like real time the short interval in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by unidentified actors is spotted on the radars of a US army base in Alaska and flagged to the White House situation room, heading for what everyone learns is its objective: central Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while undertaking an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re set to wondering where this two-hour film can possibly go once the chronometer reaches zero.
The answer – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is a return to the start: the film then shifts between the viewpoints of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ military officer, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the introduction briefly seen or mentioned. Structurally, the film is unable to advance: it’s a lengthy film with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section repeatedly, each repetition adding on contested bureaucratic steps while moving all parties toward the dreaded big bang. Prior Bigelow films had a firm hold on cause-and-effect; her best films as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the catalytic moment is also the final play; the drama gets interesting at the precise instant the film ends. The personas are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the plot cycles in diminishing returns, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve plenty of opportunity to ponder the harmful influence streaming budgets has had on the aesthetic of U.S. films. Even on the big screen, Dynamite struck the eye as dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing recalling 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings employing identical backdrops, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that initial segment as possibly one more of this director’s tough-minded working women, clocks off early, so once more it’s up to a cabal of frowning men to try to prevent the world’s end. The passion Bigelow brought to her pulpier breakthrough films vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the film-maker felt she had to restrain her experimental tendencies, but a script this talky required some compensatory pyrotechnics.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The anxiety A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a filmmaker's fear of being considered inadequate; tensing up and almost petrifying as it goes along, it’s understandable the film should have been surpassed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this story assumes is that those holding roles of command would be qualified professionals, fundamentally diligent and that the largest risk to Chicago in the latter part of 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 initial of this director’s latest projects to fall in the space between oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime clawing futilely behind the curve. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the rogue missile first appears on sensors, the United States Bigelow’s film portrays has been shattered completely.
