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

Bestowed upon a select group, the title 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 distinguished director through this prism, cinema analysts may feel pressured to justify even their poorest efforts. (The logic is that a subpar film by a Prestigious Auteur is still superior to the best work of a commercial director.) One drawback is that such titles can limit a creative to a constrained space, searching only for material befitting a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the dismay when a project doesn't spark is significantly amplified. A notable example has just reached Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if feedback from movie enthusiasts are any indication – seems destined for only one recognition this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.

Retracing the Director's Steps

To determine why the film has disappointed many, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow established her acclaim with a succession of broad, agile genre films: biker flick The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the timeless Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. Clearer indication of her direction of travel came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an electrifying sci-fi suspense story, influenced by the Rodney King case, which also served as a moral story about the perils of abandoning reality to seek shelter in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more alert to this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, at work on 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 contemporary conflicts in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, entered into a contentious dialogue with the country’s deep-seated legacy of racism.

It's easy to see why a film-maker on this trajectory might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who penned Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the streamer would strongly support a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One idea for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)

What Works and What Doesn't

Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, describing in something like real time the 19 minutes in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by unknown parties is spotted on the radars of a United States outpost in Alaska and flagged to the presidential command center, heading for what everyone learns is its target: 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 chronometer hits zero.

The response – and this is where the letdowns start – is back to the beginning: the film later moves between the angles of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ general, secretary of defence Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the introduction briefly seen or mentioned. Structurally, the film can’t develop: it’s a lengthy film with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section repeatedly, every iteration layering on contested bureaucratic steps while moving all parties toward the anticipated detonation. Prior Bigelow films had a tight grip on cause-and-effect; her most successful works as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the inciting incident is also the endgame; the drama gets interesting at the exact moment the film fades to black. The characters are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for different reasons.

Stylistic and Conceptual Issues

While the situation spins in ever decreasing circles, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve plenty of opportunity to ponder the harmful influence Netflix money has had on the look of Hollywood productions. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite seemed dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming evoking 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings recycling the same sets, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist disappears, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that initial segment as perhaps an additional of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, clocks off early, so again it’s up to a collection of stern males to try to prevent the world’s end. The passion Bigelow contributed to her pulpier breakthrough films is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the director felt she had to rein in her bold choices, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some compensatory pyrotechnics.

Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment

The anxiety A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t global eradication, but a filmmaker's fear of being deemed insufficient; stiffening and practically fossilising as it goes along, it’s understandable the film should have been overtaken by current, reshaping incidents. What this screenplay presumes is that those holding roles of command would be skilled experts, conscientious to the core and that the largest risk to Chicago in late 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where previous Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their era, Dynamite – the first of this director’s newer films to fall somewhere between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime clawing futilely out of touch. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the stray rocket first appears on sensors, the America Bigelow’s film portrays has been blown to smithereens.