Bestowed upon a select group, the mantle of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the favorable side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this lens, cinema analysts may feel obliged to make excuses for even their poorest efforts. (The rationale is that a disappointing film by a Prestigious Auteur is still more valuable than the best work of a commercial director.) One drawback is that such honorifics can restrict a creative to a very narrow courtyard, pursuing exclusively material suitable for a Noted Film-maker; another is that the frustration when a project fails to ignite is all the greater. A prominent test case has just reached Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if texts from cinephile pals are any measure – seems destined for only one honor this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.
Examining Bigelow's Career Path
To ascertain the reasons the film has underwhelmed so, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow established her acclaim with a succession of broad, agile genre films: biker flick The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the timeless Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. Clearer indication of her creative evolution came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an electrifying sci-fi suspense story, shaped by the Rodney King incident, which also doubled as a cautionary fable about the dangers of abandoning reality to take cover in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her homeland – was pushed into a reactive stance. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled America’s recent military engagements in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the period following the Charlottesville events, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s long history of racism.
One can appreciate why a film-maker on this trajectory might be interested in Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who wrote Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the service would vigorously back a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One pitch for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the short interval in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific region by unidentified actors is detected by sensors of a United States outpost in Alaska and reported to the presidential command center, heading for what everyone learns is its objective: the heart of Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim briskly accelerate the stakes while engaging in an compelling countdown strategy: we’re made to question where this two-hour film can possibly go once the countdown clock hits zero.
The response – and this is where the letdowns start – is a revisit of the opening: the film then shifts between the viewpoints of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene briefly seen or mentioned. From a narrative standpoint, the film is unable to advance: it’s a lengthy film with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment repeatedly, each repetition trowelling on contested bureaucratic steps while edging everybody closer the anticipated detonation. Previous Bigelow films had a tight grip on stimulus and response; her best films as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the catalytic moment is also the final play; the narrative captivates at the precise instant the film fades to black. The figures are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for different reasons.
Visual and Thematic Shortcomings
While the plot revolves in shrinking loops, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve ample time to reflect on the negative impact platform financing has had on the visual style of U.S. films. Even on the big screen, Dynamite seemed dully conventional, 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 fades away, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that beginning part as possibly one more of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, exits prematurely, so once more it’s left to a group of serious male figures to try to stop doomsday. The verve Bigelow contributed to her pulpier breakthrough films disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the film-maker felt she had to curb her risk-taking, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some offsetting dramatic intensity.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The anxiety A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t global eradication, but a director’s terror of being deemed insufficient; becoming rigid and practically fossilising as it unfolds, it’s understandable the film should have been surpassed by current, reshaping incidents. What this script takes for granted is that those holding roles of command would be skilled experts, conscientious to the core and that the largest risk to Chicago in late 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their moment, Dynamite – the first of this director’s latest projects to fall somewhere between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours clawing futilely behind the curve. 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.
