Bestowed upon a select group, the title of Noted Film-maker 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 ennobled director through this perspective, film scholars may feel obliged to justify even their poorest efforts. (The rationale is that a disappointing film by a Noted Film-maker is still superior to the best work of a commercial director.) One disadvantage is that such honorifics can limit a creative to a tight creative box, pursuing exclusively material befitting a Esteemed Director; another is that the dismay when a project fails to ignite is all the greater. A high-profile instance has made its way to Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if texts from cinephile pals are any guide – seems assured of only one award this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
Retracing the Director's Steps
To determine why the film has failed to impress, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow established her acclaim with a succession of expansive, limber genre pics: biker flick The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the classic Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A sharper insight of her creative evolution came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an intense future-now thriller, influenced by the Rodney King incident, which also served as a warning tale about the dangers of escaping from the real world to find refuge in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her ex-partner and writer 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 forced on the defensive. 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 heated debate with the country’s deep-seated legacy of racism.
One can appreciate why a artist following this path might be interested in 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 service would strongly support a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One idea for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)
The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses
Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the brief period in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by unknown parties is detected by sensors of a American military installation in Alaska and reported to the executive briefing area, heading for what everyone learns is its target: central Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while engaging in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re set to wondering where this full-length production can possibly head once the chronometer expires.
The response – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is a return to the start: the film later moves between the angles of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the prologue only partially revealed. In terms of construction, the film is unable to advance: it’s a lengthy film with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section again and again, each repetition trowelling on contested bureaucratic steps while inching everyone nearer the feared explosion. Prior 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 inherently about outcomes. But here, the catalytic moment is also the final play; the story becomes engaging at the precise instant the film fades to black. The characters are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for different reasons.
Visual and Thematic Shortcomings
While the plot revolves in shrinking loops, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve ample time to consider the deleterious effect streaming budgets has had on the visual style of U.S. films. Even on the large screen, Dynamite appeared as uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork evoking 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings recycling the same sets, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist fades away, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that initial segment as perhaps an additional of this director’s tough-minded working women, exits prematurely, so again it’s left to a group of serious male figures to try to stop doomsday. The energy Bigelow brought to her pulpier breakthrough films disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the director felt she had to restrain her bold choices, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some balancing visual flair.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The dread A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a artist's anxiety of being considered inadequate; becoming rigid and virtually solidifying as it goes along, it’s understandable the film should have been overtaken by recent, recontextualising events. What this screenplay takes for granted is that those in charge of critical decisions would be qualified professionals, deeply responsible and that the largest risk to Chicago in the latter part of 2025 would come from an origin beyond the White House. Where previous Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their era, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s newer films to fall somewhere between afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours scrabbling around hopelessly behind the curve. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the rogue missile first registers on a radar, the America Bigelow’s film portrays has been blown to smithereens.
