Bestowed upon a select group, the designation of Esteemed Director can serve as an honor and a weight. On the positive side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an celebrated director through this perspective, auteurist critics may feel compelled to justify even their least successful efforts. (The rationale is that a disappointing film by a Renowned Director is still more valuable than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One downside is that such titles can confine a creative to a tight creative box, searching only for material suitable for a Esteemed Director; another is that the dismay when a project falls flat is all the greater. A prominent example has recently arrived on Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if texts from cinephile pals are any measure – seems assured of only one award this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.
Examining Bigelow's Career Path
To ascertain the reasons the film has disappointed many, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow earned her laurels with a run of broad, agile genre films: biker flick The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the enduring Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A sharper insight of her artistic path came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an electrifying sci-fi suspense story, shaped by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also served as a warning tale about the dangers of abandoning reality to take cover in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more alert to this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, now preparing the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her native country – was compelled to respond to external pressures. 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 heated debate with the country’s deep-seated legacy of racism.
One can appreciate why a film-maker on this trajectory might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who scripted Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the streamer would strongly support a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One idea for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses
Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, depicting in near real-time the 19 minutes in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by unidentified actors is picked up on screens of a American military installation in Alaska and reported to the executive briefing area, en route towards what everyone learns is its objective: downtown Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while undertaking an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re set to wondering where this full-length production can possibly proceed once the countdown clock hits zero.
The outcome – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is back to the beginning: the film later moves between the angles 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. From a narrative standpoint, the film fails to progress: it’s a two-hour movie with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment repeatedly, each pass trowelling on moot procedural points while edging everybody closer the dreaded big bang. Prior Bigelow films had a strong control on cause-and-effect; her most successful works as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the catalytic moment is also the endgame; the story becomes engaging at the very second the film concludes. The figures are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for separate causes.
Stylistic and Conceptual Issues
While the situation spins in ever decreasing circles, like a bleak repetitive cycle, we’ve plenty of opportunity to reflect on the negative impact platform financing has had on the visual style of American cinema. Even on the big screen, Dynamite struck the eye as uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content recycling the same sets, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that beginning part as potentially another of this director’s strong female professionals, clocks off early, so once more it’s the responsibility of a collection of stern males to try to prevent the world’s end. The energy Bigelow infused into her pulpier breakthrough films vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the director felt she had to restrain her bold choices, but a script this verbose required some offsetting dramatic intensity.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The fear 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 goes along, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been eclipsed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this script assumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be qualified professionals, deeply responsible and that the biggest threat to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their moment, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s newer films to fall in a gray area of oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends two listless hours scrabbling around hopelessly behind the curve. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the rogue missile first is detected, the United States Bigelow’s film depicts has been destroyed utterly.
