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

Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the designation of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as an honor and a weight. On the favorable side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this prism, cinema analysts may feel obliged to make excuses for even their poorest efforts. (The rationale is that a lackluster film by a Prestigious Auteur is still more valuable than the best work of a routine filmmaker.) One drawback is that such accolades can limit a creative to a very narrow courtyard, seeking out material befitting a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the disappointment when a project doesn't spark is even more pronounced. A notable test case has just reached Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if messages from film buff friends are any measure – seems assured of only one recognition this season: that for Biggest Letdown.

Retracing the Director's Steps

To determine why the film has failed to impress, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow built her reputation with a succession of versatile and dynamic movies: biker flick The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the classic Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A more definite sign of her artistic path came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an electrifying sci-fi suspense story, influenced by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also doubled as a moral story about the risks of abandoning reality to seek shelter in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more alert to 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 compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled America’s recent military engagements in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the summer of Charlottesville, entered into a heated debate with the country’s deep-seated legacy of racism.

It's easy to see why a artist following this path might be interested in Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who penned Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the platform would enthusiastically stump for a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One concept for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)

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 unknown parties is picked up on screens of a United States outpost in Alaska and alerted to the presidential command center, en route towards what everyone learns is its destination: downtown Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while undertaking an compelling countdown strategy: we’re made to question where this feature-length movie can possibly head once the chronometer expires.

The answer – and this is where the letdowns start – is a return to the start: the film then shifts between the viewpoints of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the opening scene briefly seen or mentioned. From a narrative standpoint, the film can’t develop: it’s a lengthy film with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section again and again, every iteration trowelling on moot procedural points while inching everyone nearer the dreaded big bang. Earlier Bigelow films had a strong control on cause-and-effect; her most successful works as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the triggering event is also the endgame; the drama gets interesting at the precise instant the film fades to black. The figures are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for different reasons.

Visual and Thematic Shortcomings

While the scenario cycles in diminishing returns, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve plenty of opportunity to consider the deleterious effect platform financing has had on the aesthetic of American cinema. Even on the large screen, Dynamite seemed flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing recalling 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases reusing familiar locations, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director fades away, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that beginning part as possibly one more of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, leaves the story too soon, so once more it’s up to a cabal of frowning men to try to prevent the world’s end. The verve Bigelow infused into her grittier initial successes is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the film-maker felt she had to restrain her risk-taking, but a script this verbose required some compensatory pyrotechnics.

Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment

The dread A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a filmmaker's fear of being thought unworthy; tensing up and practically fossilising as it unfolds, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been eclipsed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this story assumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be trained specialists, deeply responsible and that the greatest danger 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 time, Dynamite – the first of this director’s latest projects to fall in a gray area of afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours struggling aimlessly behind the curve. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the stray rocket first appears on sensors, the America Bigelow’s film depicts has been destroyed utterly.