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 ennobled director through this prism, auteurist critics may feel compelled to defend even their least successful efforts. (The rationale is that a subpar film by a Renowned Director is still better than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One drawback is that such accolades can restrict a creative to a constrained space, seeking out material worthy of a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the dismay when a project falls flat is significantly amplified. A prominent instance has made its way to Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if messages from film buff friends are any indication – seems destined for only one recognition this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.
Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey
To determine why the film has disappointed many, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow established her acclaim with a succession of broad, agile genre films: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the timeless action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. Clearer indication of her direction of travel came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an electrifying future-now thriller, influenced by the Rodney King case, which also doubled as a moral story about the perils of abandoning reality to take cover in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, currently prepping 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 broached America’s contemporary conflicts in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, entered into a contentious dialogue 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 – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who scripted Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the platform would vigorously back a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One concept for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the 19 minutes in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific region by unidentified actors is picked up on screens of a United States outpost in Alaska and flagged to the executive briefing area, traveling to what everyone learns is its target: the heart of Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while engaging in an compelling countdown strategy: we’re made to question where this two-hour film can possibly head once the timer expires.
The outcome – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is a return to the start: the film then shifts 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. Structurally, the film fails to progress: it’s a two-hour movie with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel multiple times, each pass adding on debated technical details while edging everybody closer the feared explosion. Previous Bigelow films had a firm hold on stimulus and response; her finest achievements as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the catalytic moment is also the final play; the drama gets interesting at the exact moment the film concludes. The personas are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.
Stylistic and Conceptual Issues
While the plot revolves in shrinking loops, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve ample time to consider the harmful influence platform financing has had on the visual style of Hollywood productions. Even on the big screen, Dynamite seemed dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming evoking 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings reusing familiar locations, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist disappears, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that initial segment as possibly one more of this director’s tough-minded working women, exits prematurely, so again it’s left to a group of serious male figures to try to prevent the world’s end. The energy Bigelow infused into her pulpier breakthrough films is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the director felt she had to restrain her risk-taking, but a script this verbose required some offsetting dramatic intensity.
Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts
The dread A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a director’s terror of being considered inadequate; tensing up and virtually solidifying as it goes along, it’s not unexpected the film should have been eclipsed by recent, recontextualising events. What this story assumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be skilled experts, deeply responsible and that the greatest danger to Chicago in late 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like intensely involved commentaries on their era, Dynamite – the first of this director’s latest projects to fall somewhere between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – 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 is detected, the United States Bigelow’s film portrays has been destroyed utterly.
