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

Bestowed upon an elite few, the designation of Esteemed Director can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the beneficial side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an celebrated director through this perspective, film scholars may feel obliged to defend even their poorest efforts. (The rationale is that a disappointing film by a Renowned Director is still better than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One disadvantage is that such titles can confine a creative to a tight creative box, searching only for material befitting a Esteemed Director; another is that the disappointment when a project doesn't spark is even more pronounced. A prominent example has made its way to Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if messages from film buff friends are any guide – seems nailed on for only one honor this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.

Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey

To determine why the film has disappointed many, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow built her reputation with a series of versatile and dynamic movies: biker flick The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the timeless action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A more definite sign of her creative evolution came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an gripping near-future drama, shaped by the Rodney King incident, which also doubled as a moral story about the perils of escaping from the real world to find refuge in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet post-2001, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her homeland – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty broached America’s contemporary conflicts in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s extended past of racism.

One can appreciate why a film-maker on this trajectory might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who penned Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the service would vigorously back a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One pitch for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)

High Points and Low Points

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 region by unknown parties is spotted on the radars of a American military installation in Alaska and flagged to the presidential command center, en route towards what everyone learns is its target: downtown Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim briskly accelerate the stakes while undertaking an intriguing temporal brinkmanship: we’re made to question where this full-length production can possibly go once the countdown clock hits zero.

The answer – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is a return to the start: the film then shifts between the viewpoints of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the introduction glimpsed or heard only in passing. In terms of construction, the film can’t develop: it’s a extended runtime with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel repeatedly, each pass adding on contested bureaucratic steps while edging everybody closer the anticipated detonation. Previous Bigelow films had a strong control on cause-and-effect; her most successful works as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the catalytic moment is also the concluding action; the narrative captivates at the exact moment the film concludes. The figures are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for separate causes.

Visual and Thematic Shortcomings

While the scenario spins in ever decreasing circles, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve sufficient moments to consider the negative impact Netflix money has had on the look of Hollywood productions. Even on the big screen, Dynamite appeared as uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings employing identical backdrops, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker fades away, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that opening reel as perhaps an additional of this director’s strong female professionals, clocks off early, so once more it’s up to a collection of stern males to try to avert global catastrophe. The passion Bigelow contributed to her grittier initial successes vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the artist felt she had to restrain her risk-taking, but a script this verbose required some offsetting dramatic intensity.

Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment

The fear A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a filmmaker's fear of being considered inadequate; becoming rigid and practically fossilising as it unfolds, it’s understandable the film should have been overtaken by recent, recontextualising events. What this script takes for granted is that those occupying positions of operational authority would be qualified professionals, fundamentally diligent and that the largest risk to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from an origin beyond the White House. Where previous Bigelow films felt like intensely involved commentaries on their era, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s latest projects to fall in the space between oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime struggling aimlessly out of touch. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the stray rocket first appears on sensors, the nation Bigelow’s film depicts has been blown to smithereens.