Kathryn Bigelow's A House of Dynamite: A Political Fantasy and Major Disappointment.

Bestowed upon an elite few, the designation of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the favorable side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an celebrated director through this perspective, auteurist critics may feel compelled to justify even their poorest efforts. (The rationale is that a subpar film by a Prestigious Auteur is still more valuable than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One drawback 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 dismay when a project falls flat is even more pronounced. A high-profile 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 measure – seems nailed on for only one recognition this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.

Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey

To determine why the film has disappointed many, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow established her acclaim with a series of versatile and dynamic movies: biker flick The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the classic action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A more definite sign of her creative evolution came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an electrifying sci-fi suspense story, influenced by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also functioned as a cautionary fable about the risks of rejecting actuality 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 following the turn of the millennium, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her the United States – 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 heated debate with the country’s long history of racism.

One can appreciate why a director with this background might be interested in Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who wrote Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the platform would vigorously back a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One pitch for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)

What Works and What Doesn't

Dynamite is at its most effective early on, depicting in near real-time the brief period in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific region by unidentified actors is detected by sensors of a United States outpost in Alaska and flagged to the executive briefing area, traveling to what everyone learns is its destination: the heart of Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim briskly accelerate the stakes while undertaking an compelling countdown strategy: we’re left pondering where this full-length production can possibly proceed once the countdown clock reaches zero.

The response – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is a revisit of the opening: the film subsequently shuffles between the angles of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ general, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the prologue briefly seen or mentioned. Structurally, the film is unable to advance: it’s a two-hour movie with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel repeatedly, every iteration adding on contested bureaucratic steps while edging everybody closer the anticipated detonation. Previous Bigelow films had a tight grip on cause-and-effect; her finest achievements as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the inciting incident is also the final play; the story becomes engaging at the very second the film concludes. The figures are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.

Visual and Thematic Shortcomings

While the scenario revolves in shrinking loops, like a bleak repetitive cycle, we’ve sufficient moments to reflect on the harmful influence Netflix money has had on the look of Hollywood productions. Even on the large screen, Dynamite struck the eye as dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing evoking 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings recycling the same sets, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker disappears, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that initial segment as possibly one more of this director’s strong female professionals, leaves the story too soon, so once more it’s up to a cabal of frowning men to try to avert global catastrophe. The energy Bigelow brought to her grittier initial successes vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the film-maker felt she had to restrain her risk-taking, but a script this talky required some balancing visual flair.

Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts

The fear A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a artist's anxiety of being considered inadequate; becoming rigid and almost petrifying as it goes along, it’s not unexpected the film should have been eclipsed by recent, recontextualising events. What this story takes for granted is that those in charge of critical decisions would be trained specialists, conscientious to the core and that the greatest danger to Chicago in late 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 recent works to fall in a gray area of afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends two listless hours clawing futilely behind the curve. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the unauthorized projectile first appears on sensors, the nation Bigelow’s film describes has been destroyed utterly.