Kathryn Bigelow's A House of Dynamite: An Ambitious Political Thriller and Major Disappointment.

Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the designation of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the beneficial side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this lens, film scholars may feel compelled to make excuses for even their poorest efforts. (The reasoning is that a subpar film by a Noted Film-maker is still more valuable than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One downside is that such honorifics can confine a creative to a very narrow courtyard, searching only for material worthy of a Esteemed Director; another is that the disappointment when a project fails to ignite is all the greater. A notable test case has made its way to Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if feedback from movie enthusiasts are any guide – seems nailed on for only one honor this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.

Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey

To ascertain the reasons the film has failed to impress, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow built her reputation with a succession of broad, agile genre films: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the classic action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. Clearer indication of her direction of travel came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an gripping future-now thriller, informed by the Rodney King incident, which also doubled as a warning tale about the dangers of escaping from the real world to take cover in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet post-2001, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her homeland – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled 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 long history of racism.

It's easy to see why a artist following this path might be interested in Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who penned Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the platform would vigorously back a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One concept for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)

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 missile launched somewhere in the Pacific by mysterious forces is spotted on the radars of a United States outpost in Alaska and reported to the executive briefing area, en route towards what everyone learns is its objective: downtown Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while engaging in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re made to question where this two-hour film can possibly proceed once the timer reaches zero.

The response – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is a return to the start: the film then shifts between the angles of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the prologue glimpsed or heard only in passing. In terms of construction, the film can’t develop: it’s a lengthy film with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel repeatedly, each repetition adding on contested bureaucratic steps while moving all parties toward the anticipated detonation. Previous Bigelow films had a firm hold on cause-and-effect; her most successful works as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the triggering event is also the final play; the story becomes engaging at the precise instant the film concludes. The figures are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for different reasons.

Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws

While the situation revolves in shrinking loops, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve plenty of opportunity to reflect on the harmful influence Netflix money has had on the aesthetic of Hollywood productions. Even on the large screen, Dynamite appeared as dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing evoking 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content employing identical backdrops, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that initial segment as possibly one more of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, leaves the story too soon, so yet again it’s the responsibility of a group of serious male figures to try to stop doomsday. The verve Bigelow contributed to her more genre-oriented early hits is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the artist felt she had to curb her bold choices, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some compensatory pyrotechnics.

The Core Fear and Final Analysis

The dread A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a artist's anxiety of being thought unworthy; becoming rigid and almost petrifying as it progresses, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been surpassed by recent, recontextualising events. What this screenplay presumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be skilled experts, fundamentally diligent 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 intensely involved commentaries on their moment, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s latest projects to fall somewhere between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends two listless hours struggling aimlessly outdated. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the rogue missile first registers on a radar, the nation Bigelow’s film portrays has been blown to smithereens.