Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the mantle of Esteemed Director can serve as an honor and a weight. On the beneficial side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an celebrated director through this lens, auteurist critics may feel compelled to make excuses for even their least successful efforts. (The rationale is that a lackluster film by a Noted Film-maker is still better than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One drawback is that such accolades can confine a creative to a constrained space, searching only for material suitable for a Esteemed Director; another is that the frustration when a project doesn't spark is significantly amplified. A notable example has made its way to Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if messages from film buff friends are any guide – seems nailed on for only one recognition this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
Examining Bigelow's Career Path
To ascertain the reasons the film has disappointed many, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow built her reputation with a series of expansive, limber genre pics: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga 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 gripping sci-fi suspense story, shaped by the Rodney King incident, which also functioned as a warning tale about the risks of abandoning reality to find refuge in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, now preparing the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her native country – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed America’s recent military engagements in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the period following the Charlottesville events, entered into a heated debate with the country’s long history of racism.
You can understand why a film-maker on this trajectory might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who scripted Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the service would enthusiastically stump for a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One concept for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its most effective early on, depicting in near real-time the short interval in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific by mysterious forces is spotted on the radars of a US army base in Alaska and reported to the executive briefing area, heading for what everyone learns is its destination: central Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while undertaking an compelling countdown strategy: we’re left pondering where this two-hour film can possibly go once the countdown clock expires.
The answer – and this is where the letdowns start – is back to the beginning: the film subsequently shuffles between the viewpoints of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene glimpsed or heard only in passing. Structurally, the film is unable to advance: it’s a lengthy film with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel multiple times, each repetition adding on debated technical details while inching everyone nearer the anticipated detonation. Earlier Bigelow films had a tight grip on cause-and-effect; her best films as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the inciting incident is also the concluding action; the narrative captivates at the precise instant the film fades to black. The characters are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the scenario spins in ever decreasing circles, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve sufficient moments to reflect on the harmful influence Netflix money has had on the aesthetic of Hollywood productions. Even on the big screen, Dynamite struck the eye as uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork evoking 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases employing identical backdrops, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist fades away, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that initial segment as perhaps an additional of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, leaves the story too soon, so again it’s up to a cabal of frowning men to try to stop doomsday. The energy Bigelow contributed to her pulpier breakthrough films vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the director felt she had to curb her risk-taking, but a script this verbose required some offsetting dramatic intensity.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The dread A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a filmmaker's fear of being thought unworthy; tensing up and almost petrifying as it progresses, it’s understandable the film should have been surpassed by recent, recontextualising events. What this screenplay presumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be qualified professionals, fundamentally diligent and that the biggest threat to Chicago in the latter part of 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where previous Bigelow films felt like intensely involved commentaries on their era, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s newer films to fall in a gray area of oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime scrabbling around hopelessly behind the curve. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the rogue missile first appears on sensors, the United States Bigelow’s film portrays has been blown to smithereens.
