Bestowed upon an elite few, the title of Esteemed Director can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the positive side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this lens, auteurist critics may feel compelled to make excuses for even their weakest efforts. (The logic is that a lackluster film by a Prestigious Auteur is still more valuable than the best work of a commercial director.) One downside is that such honorifics can limit a creative to a tight creative box, searching only for material suitable for a Esteemed Director; another is that the disappointment when a project doesn't spark is even more pronounced. A notable instance 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 nailed on for only one honor this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.
Examining Bigelow's Career Path
To understand why the film has failed to impress, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow established her acclaim with a series of versatile and dynamic movies: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the timeless action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A sharper insight of her direction of travel came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an electrifying sci-fi suspense story, informed by the Rodney King incident, which also functioned as a warning tale about the dangers of abandoning reality to seek shelter in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her the United States – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed 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 – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who penned Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the streamer would strongly support a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One concept for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses
Dynamite is at its strongest early on, describing in something like real time the short interval in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific by unknown parties is spotted on the radars of a United States outpost in Alaska and reported to the presidential command center, traveling to what everyone learns is its target: the heart of Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while participating in an intriguing temporal brinkmanship: we’re set to wondering where this two-hour film can possibly proceed once the countdown clock hits zero.
The answer – and this is where the letdowns start – is a return to the start: the film subsequently shuffles between the viewpoints of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ military officer, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the introduction briefly seen or mentioned. From a narrative standpoint, the film fails to progress: it’s a two-hour movie with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section repeatedly, each repetition trowelling on contested bureaucratic steps while edging everybody closer the anticipated detonation. 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 inciting incident is also the final play; the drama gets interesting at the precise instant the film concludes. The characters are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for separate causes.
Visual and Thematic Shortcomings
While the plot spins in ever decreasing circles, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve plenty of opportunity to reflect on the harmful influence Netflix money has had on the look of American cinema. Even on the large screen, Dynamite seemed flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming recalling 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content reusing familiar locations, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that initial segment as possibly one more of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, leaves the story too soon, so once more it’s the responsibility of a cabal of frowning men to try to avert global catastrophe. The passion Bigelow brought to her more genre-oriented early hits disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the film-maker felt she had to restrain her bold choices, but a script this talky required some compensatory pyrotechnics.
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 deemed insufficient; becoming rigid and virtually solidifying as it progresses, it’s not unexpected the film should have been surpassed by recent, recontextualising events. What this story assumes is that those holding roles of command would be skilled experts, deeply responsible and that the biggest threat to Chicago in late 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like intensely involved commentaries on their moment, Dynamite – the first of this director’s latest projects to fall somewhere between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends two listless hours scrabbling around hopelessly behind the curve. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the stray rocket first registers on a radar, the America Bigelow’s film depicts has been shattered completely.
