🔗 Share this article

Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the mantle of Noted Film-maker can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the positive side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this lens, film scholars may feel compelled to make excuses for even their poorest efforts. (The logic is that a disappointing film by a Noted Film-maker is still more valuable than the best work of a routine filmmaker.) One disadvantage is that such titles can limit a creative to a tight creative box, pursuing exclusively material befitting a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the disappointment when a project falls flat is all the greater. A prominent example has recently arrived on Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if messages from film buff friends are any guide – seems assured of only one honor this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.

Examining Bigelow's Career Path

To understand why the film has failed to impress, 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, police drama Blue Steel, the enduring Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. Clearer indication of her direction of travel came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an gripping future-now thriller, informed by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also doubled as a cautionary fable about the risks of escaping from the real world to seek shelter in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more alert to this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, now preparing the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her native country – was pushed into a reactive stance. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed America’s contemporary conflicts in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, entered into a heated debate with the country’s deep-seated legacy of racism.

You can understand why a film-maker on this trajectory might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who scripted Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the streamer would enthusiastically stump for a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One pitch for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)

The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses

Dynamite is at its most effective early on, depicting in near real-time the brief period in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by mysterious forces is detected by sensors of a American military installation in Alaska and alerted to the presidential command center, heading for what everyone learns is its objective: central Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while undertaking an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re left pondering where this full-length production can possibly proceed once the timer expires.

The outcome – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is back to the beginning: the film later moves between the viewpoints of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ general, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the introduction glimpsed or heard only in passing. Structurally, the film fails to progress: it’s a extended runtime with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment again and again, each repetition adding on contested bureaucratic steps while moving all parties toward the anticipated detonation. Earlier Bigelow films had a tight grip on action and consequence; her best films as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the catalytic moment is also the final play; the story becomes engaging at the exact moment the film ends. The personas are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for different reasons.

Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws

While the scenario spins in ever decreasing circles, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve plenty of opportunity to reflect on the harmful influence Netflix money has had on the visual style of Hollywood productions. Even on the large screen, Dynamite seemed dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork evoking 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases reusing familiar locations, 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, sketched in that initial segment as possibly one more of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, leaves the story too soon, so once more it’s left to a collection of stern males to try to avert global catastrophe. The passion Bigelow infused into her pulpier breakthrough films is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the film-maker felt she had to restrain her experimental tendencies, but a script this talky required some balancing visual flair.

Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts

The anxiety A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a filmmaker's fear of being thought unworthy; tensing up and virtually solidifying as it unfolds, it’s understandable the film should have been eclipsed by recent, recontextualising events. What this screenplay presumes is that those holding roles of command would be skilled experts, deeply responsible and that the largest risk to Chicago in the latter part of 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their time, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s recent works to fall somewhere between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime clawing futilely out of touch. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the unauthorized projectile first is detected, the nation Bigelow’s film describes has been blown to smithereens.