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

Bestowed upon an elite few, the designation 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 celebrated director through this prism, film scholars may feel obliged to justify even their weakest efforts. (The reasoning is that a disappointing film by a Prestigious Auteur is still superior to the best work of a jobbing hack.) One disadvantage is that such accolades can confine a creative to a constrained space, seeking out material suitable for a Esteemed Director; another is that the dismay when a project fails to ignite is even more pronounced. A prominent instance has recently arrived on Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if messages from film buff friends are any measure – seems nailed on for only one award this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.

Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey

To ascertain the reasons the film has underwhelmed so, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow built her reputation with a series of expansive, limber genre pics: biker flick The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the classic Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A sharper insight of her direction of travel came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an intense sci-fi suspense story, influenced by the Rodney King case, which also served as a cautionary fable about the perils of abandoning reality 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 post-2001, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her homeland – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed America’s then-recent misadventures in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s long history of racism.

It's easy to see why a film-maker on this trajectory might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who scripted Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the service would strongly support a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One pitch for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)

What Works and What Doesn't

Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the brief period in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by unidentified actors is detected by sensors of a United States outpost in Alaska and flagged to the White House situation room, heading for what everyone learns is its destination: downtown Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim briskly accelerate the stakes while engaging in an intriguing temporal brinkmanship: we’re made to question where this full-length production can possibly head once the timer expires.

The answer – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is back to the beginning: the film later moves between the viewpoints of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the opening scene briefly seen or mentioned. Structurally, the film can’t develop: it’s a two-hour movie with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment again and again, each pass layering on moot procedural points while moving all parties toward the anticipated detonation. Prior Bigelow films had a strong control on action and consequence; her finest achievements as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the inciting incident is also the concluding action; the drama gets interesting at the very second the film fades to black. The figures are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for different reasons.

Visual and Thematic Shortcomings

While the situation cycles in diminishing returns, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve plenty of opportunity to consider the harmful influence streaming budgets has had on the visual style of Hollywood productions. Even on the large screen, Dynamite appeared as uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing recalling 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings reusing familiar locations, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker disappears, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that opening reel as possibly one more of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, leaves the story too soon, so yet again it’s the responsibility of a group of serious male figures to try to avert global catastrophe. The energy Bigelow infused into her pulpier breakthrough films vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the director felt she had to curb her risk-taking, but a script this verbose required some offsetting dramatic intensity.

Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment

The anxiety A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a artist's anxiety of being considered inadequate; stiffening and virtually solidifying as it progresses, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been overtaken by contemporary, reframing developments. What this script takes for granted is that those occupying positions of operational authority would be qualified professionals, fundamentally diligent and that the greatest danger to Chicago in late 2025 would come from an origin beyond the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like intensely involved commentaries on their time, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s recent works to fall in the space between oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime scrabbling around hopelessly behind the curve. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the stray rocket first registers on a radar, the America Bigelow’s film portrays has been destroyed utterly.