Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the mantle of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the positive side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this perspective, auteurist critics may feel compelled to justify even their weakest efforts. (The logic is that a disappointing film by a Renowned Director is still superior to the best work of a commercial director.) One disadvantage is that such accolades can restrict a creative to a constrained space, searching only for material worthy of a Noted Film-maker; another is that the frustration when a project fails to ignite is even more pronounced. A notable example has made its way to Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if messages from film buff friends are any measure – seems nailed on for only one honor this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.
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 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 sharper insight of her direction of travel came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an intense future-now thriller, informed by the Rodney King case, which also doubled as a moral story about the perils of rejecting actuality to find refuge in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more aware of 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 reputation growing, Bigelow – like her the United States – 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 period following the Charlottesville events, entered into a contentious dialogue with the country’s extended past of racism.
You can understand why a director with this background might be interested in Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who wrote Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the platform would strongly support a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One idea for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its strongest early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the 19 minutes in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific region by mysterious forces is detected by sensors of a United States outpost in Alaska and flagged to the White House situation room, traveling to what everyone learns is its destination: downtown Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while engaging in an compelling countdown strategy: we’re set to wondering where this full-length production can possibly proceed once the timer hits zero.
The response – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is a return to the start: the film later moves between the viewpoints of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the prologue glimpsed or heard only in passing. From a narrative standpoint, the film fails to progress: it’s a extended runtime with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section multiple times, each pass layering on moot procedural points while moving all parties toward the anticipated detonation. Earlier Bigelow films had a strong control on action and consequence; her finest achievements as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the triggering event is also the concluding action; the story becomes engaging at the very second the film ends. The figures are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for different reasons.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the plot spins in ever decreasing circles, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve sufficient moments to consider the negative impact Netflix money has had on the visual style of American cinema. Even on the big screen, Dynamite struck the eye as dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming evoking 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings recycling the same sets, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that beginning part as potentially another of this director’s strong female professionals, clocks off early, so once more it’s the responsibility of a cabal of frowning men to try to prevent the world’s end. The verve Bigelow contributed to her grittier initial successes is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the director felt she had to restrain her bold choices, but a script this talky required some balancing visual flair.
The Core Fear and Final Analysis
The fear A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t global eradication, but a filmmaker's fear of being considered inadequate; becoming rigid and almost petrifying as it progresses, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been eclipsed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this script takes for granted is that those in charge of critical decisions would be trained specialists, 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 deeply committed examinations on their moment, Dynamite – the first of this director’s newer films to fall in the space between oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime clawing futilely out of touch. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the unauthorized projectile first is detected, the nation Bigelow’s film describes has been shattered completely.
