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 provide a shield: when viewing the works of an celebrated director through this perspective, auteurist critics may feel compelled to justify even their poorest efforts. (The rationale is that a disappointing film by a Noted Film-maker is still more valuable than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One downside is that such titles can confine a creative to a constrained space, searching only for material worthy of a Noted Film-maker; another is that the dismay when a project doesn't spark is all the greater. A high-profile example has made its way to Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if texts from cinephile pals are any guide – seems nailed on for only one recognition this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.
Retracing the Director's Steps
To understand why the film has underwhelmed so, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow established her acclaim with a succession of broad, agile genre films: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the classic action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A sharper insight of her direction of travel came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an electrifying sci-fi suspense story, informed by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also doubled as a cautionary fable about the dangers of escaping from the real world to find refuge 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 following the turn of the millennium, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her homeland – was pushed into a reactive stance. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty broached America’s recent military engagements in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the period following the Charlottesville events, entered into a contentious dialogue with the country’s long history of racism.
One can appreciate why a director with this background might be interested in Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who wrote Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the platform would strongly support a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One pitch for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)
The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses
Dynamite is at its strongest early on, depicting in near real-time the short interval 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 presidential command center, en route towards what everyone learns is its objective: downtown Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while participating in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re set to wondering where this feature-length movie can possibly proceed once the countdown clock hits zero.
The answer – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is back to the beginning: the film subsequently shuffles between the angles of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the opening scene glimpsed or heard only in passing. From a narrative standpoint, the film fails to progress: it’s a two-hour movie with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment repeatedly, each repetition adding on debated technical details while edging everybody closer the dreaded big bang. Previous Bigelow films had a tight grip on action and consequence; her best films as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the inciting incident is also the endgame; the story becomes engaging at the precise instant the film ends. The personas are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.
Visual and Thematic Shortcomings
While the situation spins in ever decreasing circles, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve sufficient moments to reflect on the negative impact streaming budgets has had on the visual style of Hollywood productions. Even on the large screen, Dynamite seemed flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork recalling 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content reusing familiar locations, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker fades away, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that beginning part as potentially another of this director’s strong female professionals, leaves the story too soon, so yet again it’s the responsibility of a cabal of frowning men to try to avert global catastrophe. The energy Bigelow contributed to her pulpier breakthrough films is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the director felt she had to rein in her risk-taking, but a script this verbose required some offsetting dramatic intensity.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The dread A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t global eradication, but a director’s terror of being thought unworthy; stiffening and virtually solidifying as it progresses, it’s not unexpected the film should have been overtaken by current, reshaping incidents. What this story assumes is that those holding roles of command would be skilled experts, 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 intensely involved commentaries on their time, Dynamite – the first of this director’s recent works to fall somewhere between afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime scrabbling around hopelessly out of touch. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the rogue missile first is detected, the United States Bigelow’s film depicts has been shattered completely.
