A House of Dynamite: An Ambitious Political Thriller and Significant Letdown.

Bestowed upon a privileged handful, 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, film scholars may feel obliged to justify even their least successful efforts. (The rationale is that a subpar film by a Noted Film-maker is still more valuable than the best work of a commercial director.) One disadvantage is that such accolades can restrict a creative to a tight creative box, pursuing exclusively material befitting a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the frustration when a project doesn't spark is all the greater. 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 assured of only one honor this season: that for Biggest Letdown.

Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey

To understand why the film has disappointed many, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow established her acclaim with a run of broad, agile genre films: biker flick The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, cop thriller 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 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an gripping sci-fi suspense story, informed by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also doubled as a cautionary fable about the perils of abandoning reality to take cover in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her homeland – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed America’s recent military engagements in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s deep-seated legacy of racism.

One can appreciate why a artist following this path might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who scripted Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the streamer would vigorously back a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One idea 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 short interval in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by mysterious forces is detected by sensors of a US army base in Alaska and reported to the presidential command center, traveling to what everyone learns is its objective: central Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim briskly accelerate the stakes while engaging in an intriguing temporal brinkmanship: we’re left pondering where this feature-length movie can possibly go once the timer reaches zero.

The outcome – and this is where the letdowns start – is a return to the start: the film later moves between the angles of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the introduction glimpsed or heard only in passing. In terms of construction, the film is unable to advance: it’s a lengthy film with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel repeatedly, every iteration adding on contested bureaucratic steps while moving all parties toward the dreaded big bang. Earlier Bigelow films had a firm hold on stimulus and response; her finest achievements as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the inciting incident is also the concluding action; the story becomes engaging at the precise instant the film concludes. The characters are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for different reasons.

Visual and Thematic Shortcomings

While the plot cycles in diminishing returns, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve sufficient moments to consider the negative impact streaming budgets has had on the visual style of American cinema. Even on the large screen, Dynamite struck the eye as flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming recalling 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings recycling the same sets, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director disappears, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that opening reel as possibly one more of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, clocks off early, so again it’s the responsibility of a group of serious male figures to try to stop doomsday. The energy Bigelow brought to her pulpier breakthrough films disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the film-maker felt she had to curb her experimental tendencies, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some balancing visual flair.

Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment

The anxiety 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 unfolds, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been eclipsed by recent, recontextualising events. What this script presumes is that those occupying positions of operational authority would be trained specialists, deeply responsible and that the largest risk to Chicago in late 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like intensely involved commentaries on their moment, Dynamite – the earliest 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 outdated. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the rogue missile first registers on a radar, the United States Bigelow’s film portrays has been shattered completely.