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 beneficial side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this perspective, cinema analysts may feel compelled to justify even their least successful efforts. (The rationale is that a lackluster film by a Noted Film-maker is still more valuable than the best work of a commercial director.) One drawback is that such accolades can confine a creative to a tight creative box, seeking out material suitable for a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the dismay when a project doesn't spark is all the greater. A notable example has made its way to Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if texts from cinephile pals are any guide – seems destined for only one honor this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
Retracing the Director's Steps
To determine why the film has failed to impress, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow established her acclaim with a series of expansive, limber genre pics: biker flick The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the classic action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A more definite sign of her direction of travel came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an intense sci-fi suspense story, shaped by the Rodney King incident, which also served as a cautionary fable about the perils of abandoning reality to take cover in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, now preparing the release of Avatar 3.) Yet post-2001, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her native country – 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 attracted to Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who wrote Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the service would strongly support a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One pitch for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)
The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses
Dynamite is at its most effective early on, depicting in near real-time the short interval in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific region by unknown parties is spotted on the radars of a American military installation in Alaska and flagged to the presidential command center, traveling to what everyone learns is its destination: downtown Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while engaging in an intriguing temporal brinkmanship: we’re set to wondering where this two-hour film can possibly head once the chronometer reaches zero.
The response – and this is where the letdowns start – is back to the beginning: the film subsequently shuffles between the viewpoints of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the opening scene only partially revealed. In terms of construction, the film fails to progress: it’s a extended runtime with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section multiple times, every iteration layering on debated technical details while inching everyone nearer the dreaded big bang. Prior Bigelow films had a strong control on stimulus and response; her finest achievements as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the triggering event is also the final play; the drama gets interesting at the exact moment the film fades to black. The personas are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for different reasons.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the scenario spins in ever decreasing circles, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve ample time to reflect on the deleterious effect Netflix money has had on the look of U.S. films. Even on the big screen, Dynamite seemed uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming recalling 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings recycling the same sets, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director fades away, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that beginning part as potentially another of this director’s tough-minded working women, exits prematurely, so once more it’s up to a group of serious male figures to try to stop doomsday. The passion Bigelow infused into her more genre-oriented early hits is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the film-maker felt she had to curb her experimental tendencies, but a script this verbose required some balancing visual flair.
The Core Fear and Final Analysis
The anxiety A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a artist's anxiety of being considered inadequate; stiffening and almost petrifying as it progresses, it’s understandable the film should have been surpassed by recent, recontextualising events. What this screenplay assumes is that those holding roles of command would be skilled experts, fundamentally diligent and that the largest risk to Chicago in the latter part of 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 initial of this director’s newer films to fall in the space between afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime clawing futilely behind the curve. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the rogue missile first is detected, the United States Bigelow’s film describes has been blown to smithereens.
