Bestowed upon an elite few, the mantle of Noted Film-maker can serve as an honor and a weight. On the positive side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this prism, auteurist critics may feel obliged to make excuses for even their poorest efforts. (The reasoning is that a lackluster film by a Prestigious Auteur is still superior to the best work of a commercial director.) One drawback is that such titles can confine a creative to a very narrow courtyard, seeking out material suitable for a Noted Film-maker; another is that the frustration when a project doesn't spark is even more pronounced. A notable test case has made its way to Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if messages from film buff friends are any guide – seems nailed on for only one recognition this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.
Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey
To ascertain the reasons the film has underwhelmed so, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow earned her laurels with a series of versatile and dynamic movies: biker flick The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the enduring action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A sharper insight of her artistic path came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an intense future-now thriller, informed by the Rodney King incident, which also doubled as a warning tale about the dangers of abandoning reality to take cover in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet post-2001, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her homeland – was pushed into a reactive stance. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled America’s then-recent misadventures in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the period following the Charlottesville events, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s deep-seated legacy of racism.
One can appreciate why a film-maker on this trajectory might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who scripted Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the streamer would vigorously back a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One idea 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 missile launched somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by unknown parties is detected by sensors of a American military installation in Alaska and reported to the White House situation room, traveling to what everyone learns is its target: downtown Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim briskly accelerate the stakes while undertaking an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re set to wondering where this feature-length movie can possibly go once the countdown clock reaches zero.
The response – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is a return to the start: the film subsequently shuffles between the perspectives of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene briefly seen or mentioned. In terms of construction, the film is unable to advance: it’s a lengthy film with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel repeatedly, each pass trowelling on contested bureaucratic steps while edging everybody closer the feared explosion. Earlier Bigelow films had a tight grip on action and consequence; her most successful works as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the catalytic moment is also the concluding action; the story becomes engaging at the exact moment 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 revolves in shrinking loops, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve plenty of opportunity to ponder the deleterious effect streaming budgets has had on the look of U.S. films. Even on the large screen, Dynamite appeared as flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases employing identical backdrops, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that beginning part as possibly one more of this director’s tough-minded working women, leaves the story too soon, so again it’s the responsibility of a cabal of frowning men to try to stop doomsday. The passion Bigelow infused into her pulpier breakthrough films disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the director felt she had to restrain her experimental tendencies, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some offsetting dramatic intensity.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The fear A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a filmmaker's fear of being thought unworthy; tensing up and virtually solidifying as it progresses, it’s understandable the film should have been overtaken by recent, recontextualising events. What this screenplay presumes is that those occupying positions of operational authority would be trained specialists, deeply responsible and that the largest risk to Chicago in late 2025 would come from an origin beyond the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like intensely involved commentaries on their time, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s recent works to fall somewhere between oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours struggling aimlessly outdated. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the unauthorized projectile first appears on sensors, the United States Bigelow’s film portrays has been destroyed utterly.
