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

Bestowed upon an elite few, the title of Esteemed Director can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the favorable side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an celebrated director through this prism, auteurist critics may feel compelled to defend even their poorest efforts. (The logic is that a disappointing film by a Noted Film-maker is still superior to 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 Noted Film-maker; another is that the dismay when a project falls flat is significantly amplified. A high-profile example has recently arrived on Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if messages from film buff friends are any indication – seems assured of only one recognition this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.

Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey

To determine why the film has underwhelmed so, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow established her acclaim with a succession of versatile and dynamic movies: biker flick The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the timeless action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A more definite sign of her artistic path came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an electrifying future-now thriller, influenced by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also served as a warning tale about the dangers of escaping from the real world to find refuge in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet post-2001, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her the United States – was pushed into a reactive stance. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty broached 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 extended past of racism.

One can appreciate why a director with this background 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 platform would vigorously back a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (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 rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by unidentified actors is detected by sensors of a US army base in Alaska and flagged to the executive briefing area, heading for what everyone learns is its destination: the heart of Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim briskly accelerate the stakes while undertaking an intriguing temporal brinkmanship: we’re made to question where this two-hour film can possibly proceed once the timer reaches zero.

The outcome – and this is where the letdowns start – is a return to the start: the film then shifts between the viewpoints of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ military officer, secretary of defence Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the opening scene briefly seen or mentioned. In terms of construction, the film can’t develop: it’s a lengthy film with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel multiple times, each pass trowelling on moot procedural points while edging everybody closer the anticipated detonation. Prior Bigelow films had a strong control on cause-and-effect; her most successful works as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the inciting incident is also the concluding action; the story becomes engaging at the very second the film concludes. The figures are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.

Visual and Thematic Shortcomings

While the scenario revolves in shrinking loops, like a bleak repetitive cycle, we’ve ample time to reflect on the deleterious effect streaming budgets has had on the visual style of Hollywood productions. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite appeared as uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing recalling 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content reusing familiar locations, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that opening reel as perhaps an additional of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, exits prematurely, so once more it’s up to a collection of stern males to try to stop doomsday. The energy Bigelow infused into her pulpier breakthrough films vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the artist felt she had to curb her experimental tendencies, but a script this talky required some compensatory pyrotechnics.

The Core Fear and Final Analysis

The anxiety A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a artist's anxiety of being considered inadequate; becoming rigid and practically fossilising as it goes along, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been eclipsed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this screenplay presumes is that those occupying positions of operational authority would be skilled experts, fundamentally diligent and that the largest risk to Chicago in late 2025 would come from an origin beyond the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their moment, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s latest projects to fall in the space between afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends two listless hours clawing futilely out of touch. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the rogue missile first appears on sensors, the America Bigelow’s film portrays has been blown to smithereens.