🔗 Share this article

Bestowed upon a select group, the mantle of Noted Film-maker can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the positive side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this lens, film scholars may feel pressured to make excuses for even their poorest efforts. (The logic is that a lackluster film by a Noted Film-maker is still better than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One drawback is that such titles can limit a creative to a tight creative box, pursuing exclusively material suitable for a Esteemed Director; another is that the dismay when a project falls flat is even more pronounced. A high-profile test case has made its way to Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if texts from cinephile pals are any guide – seems destined for only one award this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.

Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey

To determine why the film has failed to impress, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow established her acclaim with a series of broad, agile genre films: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga 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 the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an electrifying sci-fi suspense story, informed by the Rodney King case, which also doubled as a warning tale about the dangers of escaping from the real world to find refuge in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet post-2001, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her native country – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed America’s then-recent misadventures in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, entered into a contentious dialogue with the country’s extended past of racism.

You can understand why a director with this background might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who penned Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the streamer would enthusiastically stump for a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One idea for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)

The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses

Dynamite is at its most effective early on, describing in something like real time the 19 minutes in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific by unidentified actors is detected by sensors of a American military installation in Alaska and alerted to the executive briefing area, en route towards what everyone learns is its target: central Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while undertaking an intriguing temporal brinkmanship: we’re set to wondering where this feature-length movie can possibly go once the chronometer hits zero.

The outcome – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is a return to the start: the film subsequently shuffles between the viewpoints of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene glimpsed or heard only in passing. In terms of construction, the film is unable to advance: it’s a extended runtime with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section repeatedly, every iteration adding on debated technical details while edging everybody closer the anticipated detonation. Prior Bigelow films had a tight grip on stimulus and response; her finest achievements as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the triggering event is also the concluding action; the narrative captivates at the precise instant the film fades to black. The figures are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for different reasons.

Visual and Thematic Shortcomings

While the scenario spins in ever decreasing circles, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve ample time to ponder the negative impact platform financing has had on the visual style of U.S. films. Even on the large screen, Dynamite seemed flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings reusing familiar locations, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker fades away, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that initial segment as possibly one more of this director’s strong female professionals, exits prematurely, so yet again it’s left to a collection of stern males to try to stop doomsday. The passion Bigelow contributed to her grittier initial successes disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the film-maker felt she had to rein in her bold choices, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some offsetting dramatic intensity.

The Core Fear and Final Analysis

The anxiety A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t global eradication, but a artist's anxiety of being thought unworthy; becoming rigid and virtually solidifying as it progresses, it’s not unexpected 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 end of 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their moment, Dynamite – the first of this director’s newer films to fall in the space between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends two listless hours scrabbling around hopelessly behind the curve. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the rogue missile first registers on a radar, the America Bigelow’s film portrays has been shattered completely.