The Film A House of Dynamite: An Ambitious Political Thriller and Major Disappointment.

Bestowed upon a select group, the designation of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as an honor and a weight. On the favorable side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an celebrated director through this prism, film scholars may feel pressured to make excuses for even their least successful efforts. (The rationale is that a lackluster film by a Prestigious Auteur is still better than the best work of a routine filmmaker.) One drawback is that such honorifics can restrict a creative to a very narrow courtyard, seeking out material befitting a Noted Film-maker; another is that the dismay when a project doesn't spark is even more pronounced. A high-profile test case has recently arrived on Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if texts from cinephile pals are any measure – seems nailed on for 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 retrace its director's steps. Bigelow established her acclaim with a succession of versatile and dynamic movies: biker flick The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the timeless Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. Clearer indication of her artistic path came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an electrifying future-now thriller, shaped by the Rodney King case, which also doubled as a moral story about the risks of escaping from the real world to seek shelter in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her the United States – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed America’s contemporary conflicts in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the period following the Charlottesville events, entered into a heated debate with the country’s long history of racism.

One can appreciate why a director with this background might be interested in Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who scripted Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the streamer would strongly support a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One pitch for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)

What Works and What Doesn't

Dynamite is at its strongest early on, depicting in near real-time the short interval in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific by unidentified actors is spotted on the radars of a US army base in Alaska and reported to the White House situation room, traveling to what everyone learns is its destination: downtown Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim briskly accelerate the stakes while participating in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re made to question where this two-hour film can possibly proceed once the chronometer hits zero.

The response – and this is where the letdowns start – is back to the beginning: the film subsequently shuffles between the viewpoints of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene briefly seen or mentioned. From a narrative standpoint, the film is unable to advance: it’s a extended runtime with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section multiple times, each pass trowelling on moot procedural points while moving all parties toward the feared explosion. Earlier Bigelow films had a firm hold on stimulus and response; her best films as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the triggering event is also the endgame; the story becomes engaging at the precise instant the film ends. The personas are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.

Stylistic and Conceptual Issues

While the scenario cycles in diminishing returns, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve ample time to ponder the negative impact streaming budgets has had on the aesthetic of American cinema. Even on the big screen, Dynamite appeared as uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing evoking 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases employing identical backdrops, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director disappears, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that opening reel as perhaps an additional of this director’s strong female professionals, leaves the story too soon, so yet again it’s left to a group of serious male figures to try to stop doomsday. The verve Bigelow contributed to her more genre-oriented early hits disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the artist felt she had to curb her bold choices, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some compensatory pyrotechnics.

Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment

The fear A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t global eradication, but a director’s terror of being deemed insufficient; stiffening and almost petrifying as it goes along, it’s understandable the film should have been overtaken by current, reshaping incidents. What this script assumes is that those occupying positions of operational authority would be trained specialists, conscientious to the core and that the biggest threat to Chicago in late 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their era, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s latest projects to fall somewhere between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours clawing futilely out of touch. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the stray rocket first is detected, the nation Bigelow’s film depicts has been shattered completely.