Bestowed upon a select group, the mantle of Noted Film-maker 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 obliged to justify even their weakest efforts. (The logic is that a disappointing film by a Prestigious Auteur is still superior to the best work of a routine filmmaker.) One drawback is that such accolades can confine a creative to a constrained space, pursuing exclusively material worthy of a Esteemed Director; another is that the frustration when a project falls flat is even more pronounced. A prominent test case has made its way to Netflix in the latest from Bigelow 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.
Examining Bigelow's Career Path
To determine why the film has disappointed many, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow earned her laurels with a succession of expansive, limber genre pics: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the enduring Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. Clearer indication of her creative evolution came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an gripping sci-fi suspense story, informed by the Rodney King incident, which also functioned as a moral story about the risks of rejecting actuality to take cover in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her the United States – was forced on the defensive. 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 contentious dialogue with the country’s extended past of racism.
It's easy to see why a film-maker on this trajectory might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who wrote Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the streamer would enthusiastically stump for a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (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, describing in something like real time the 19 minutes in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific by unidentified actors is spotted on the radars of a United States outpost in Alaska and reported to the White House situation room, heading for what everyone learns is its objective: the heart of Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim briskly accelerate the stakes while participating in an compelling countdown strategy: we’re made to question where this full-length production can possibly proceed once the timer expires.
The response – and this is where the letdowns start – is a revisit of the opening: the film then shifts between the angles of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ general, secretary of defence Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the opening scene glimpsed or heard only in passing. From a narrative standpoint, the film can’t develop: it’s a lengthy film with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel again and again, every iteration trowelling on contested bureaucratic steps while inching everyone nearer the anticipated detonation. Prior Bigelow films had a strong control on stimulus and response; her best films as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the inciting incident is also the final play; the story becomes engaging at the precise instant the film concludes. The personas are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.
Visual and Thematic Shortcomings
While the plot cycles in diminishing returns, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve sufficient moments to consider the negative impact Netflix money has had on the look of American cinema. Even on the large screen, Dynamite struck the eye as uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork recalling 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases recycling the same sets, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker disappears, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that initial segment as possibly one more of this director’s strong female professionals, leaves the story too soon, so again it’s up to a group of serious male figures to try to prevent the world’s end. The verve Bigelow contributed to her pulpier breakthrough films vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the director felt she had to curb her bold choices, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some offsetting dramatic intensity.
The Core Fear and Final Analysis
The fear A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a director’s terror of being deemed insufficient; tensing up and practically fossilising as it progresses, it’s understandable the film should have been surpassed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this story presumes is that those occupying positions of operational authority would be skilled experts, conscientious to the core and that the biggest threat to Chicago in late 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their moment, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s newer films to fall somewhere between oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime struggling aimlessly behind the curve. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the unauthorized projectile first registers on a radar, the nation Bigelow’s film describes has been shattered completely.
