Bestowed upon an elite few, the designation of Esteemed Director can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the beneficial side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an celebrated director through this prism, auteurist critics may feel obliged to make excuses for even their least successful efforts. (The reasoning is that a lackluster film by a Prestigious Auteur is still better than the best work of a routine filmmaker.) One downside is that such honorifics can confine 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 significantly amplified. A high-profile instance has recently arrived on Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if feedback from movie enthusiasts are any measure – seems assured of only one recognition this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.
Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey
To ascertain the reasons the film has failed to impress, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow earned her laurels with a succession of expansive, limber genre pics: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the timeless Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A sharper insight of her direction of travel came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an electrifying near-future drama, influenced by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also functioned as a cautionary fable about the dangers of rejecting actuality to find refuge 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 post-2001, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her homeland – was pushed into a reactive stance. 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 fractious conversation with the country’s long history of racism.
One can appreciate why a film-maker on this trajectory might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who penned Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the streamer would strongly support a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One pitch for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
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 unknown parties is picked up on screens of a US army base in Alaska and reported to the executive briefing area, en route towards what everyone learns is its target: the heart of Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim briskly accelerate the stakes while undertaking an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re made to question where this feature-length movie can possibly head once the chronometer reaches zero.
The outcome – and this is where the letdowns start – is back to the beginning: the film then shifts between the viewpoints of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the opening scene only partially revealed. From a narrative standpoint, 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 repeatedly, each pass trowelling on debated technical details while edging everybody closer the dreaded big bang. Previous Bigelow films had a strong control on cause-and-effect; her most successful works as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the inciting incident is also the concluding action; the narrative captivates at the precise instant the film concludes. The figures are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for separate causes.
Visual and Thematic Shortcomings
While the scenario revolves in shrinking loops, like a bleak repetitive cycle, we’ve ample time to consider the harmful influence streaming budgets has had on the visual style of U.S. films. Even on the large screen, Dynamite seemed dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing evoking 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content recycling the same sets, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director fades away, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that initial segment as potentially another of this director’s tough-minded working women, leaves the story too soon, so yet again it’s up to a group of serious male figures to try to prevent the world’s end. The energy Bigelow infused into her pulpier breakthrough films disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the director felt she had to rein in her bold choices, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some balancing visual flair.
Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts
The dread A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a filmmaker's fear of being considered inadequate; tensing up and almost petrifying as it unfolds, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been surpassed by current, reshaping incidents. What this story takes for granted is that those occupying positions of operational authority would be qualified professionals, fundamentally diligent and that the biggest threat to Chicago in late 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their moment, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s latest projects to fall in the space between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours struggling aimlessly behind the curve. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the stray rocket first registers on a radar, the United States Bigelow’s film depicts has been blown to smithereens.
