Kathryn Bigelow's A House of Dynamite: An Ambitious Political Thriller and Significant Letdown.

Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the title of Esteemed Director can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the beneficial side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this perspective, auteurist critics may feel pressured to make excuses for even their least successful efforts. (The logic is that a disappointing film by a Noted Film-maker is still better than the best work of a commercial director.) One downside is that such accolades can confine a creative to a constrained space, seeking out material befitting a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the frustration when a project falls flat is significantly amplified. A prominent example has just reached Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if feedback from movie enthusiasts are any indication – seems nailed on for only one honor this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.

Retracing the Director's Steps

To ascertain the reasons the film has failed to impress, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow established her acclaim with a succession of expansive, limber genre pics: 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. Clearer indication of her direction of travel came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an electrifying sci-fi suspense story, informed by the Rodney King incident, which also served as a warning tale about the dangers of rejecting actuality to take cover in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more alert to 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 standing increasing, Bigelow – like her native country – was pushed into a reactive stance. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled America’s contemporary conflicts in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the summer of Charlottesville, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s deep-seated legacy of racism.

One can appreciate why a artist following this path might be interested in Dynamite’s script – written 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 atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One idea for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)

High Points and Low Points

Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the brief period in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific by unidentified actors is detected by sensors of a American military installation in Alaska and reported to the White House situation room, heading for what everyone learns is its target: the heart of Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while undertaking an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re set to wondering where this feature-length movie can possibly proceed once the timer reaches zero.

The response – and this is where the letdowns start – is a return to the start: the film subsequently shuffles between the perspectives of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene only partially revealed. In terms of construction, the film can’t develop: it’s a two-hour movie with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment again and again, every iteration trowelling on contested bureaucratic steps while edging everybody closer the feared explosion. Previous Bigelow films had a strong control on stimulus and response; her best films as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the catalytic moment is also the endgame; the story becomes engaging at the exact moment the film ends. The figures are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.

Visual and Thematic Shortcomings

While the scenario spins in ever decreasing circles, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve sufficient moments to reflect on the harmful influence streaming budgets has had on the look of American cinema. Even on the large screen, Dynamite appeared as uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing recalling 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases recycling the same sets, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker disappears, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that initial segment as possibly one more of this director’s tough-minded working women, leaves the story too soon, so once more it’s left to a group of serious male figures to try to avert global catastrophe. The energy Bigelow brought to her pulpier breakthrough films disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the director felt she had to curb her risk-taking, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some balancing visual flair.

Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts

The dread A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t global eradication, but a artist's anxiety of being deemed insufficient; tensing up and practically fossilising as it unfolds, it’s understandable the film should have been surpassed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this story presumes is that those holding roles of command would be trained specialists, deeply responsible and that the largest risk to Chicago in late 2025 would come from an origin beyond the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their moment, Dynamite – the first of this director’s recent works to fall in the space between oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours struggling aimlessly outdated. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the rogue missile first appears on sensors, the United States Bigelow’s film describes has been shattered completely.