Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the designation of Esteemed Director can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the positive side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this prism, auteurist critics may feel obliged to justify even their weakest efforts. (The reasoning is that a disappointing film by a Prestigious Auteur is still better than the best work of a commercial director.) One downside is that such accolades can confine a creative to a very narrow courtyard, pursuing exclusively material befitting a Esteemed Director; another is that the dismay when a project falls flat is all the greater. A prominent example has just reached Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if messages from film buff friends are any measure – seems assured of only one award this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.
Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey
To understand why the film has underwhelmed so, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow built her reputation with a succession of broad, agile genre films: biker flick The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the classic 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 gripping sci-fi suspense story, shaped by the Rodney King case, which also doubled as a cautionary fable about the dangers of abandoning reality to take cover in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her native country – was pushed into a reactive stance. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed America’s then-recent misadventures in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s long history of racism.
It's easy to see why a artist following this path might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who scripted Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the platform would vigorously back a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One idea for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its most effective early on, describing in something like real time the 19 minutes in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific by mysterious forces is detected by sensors of a US army base in Alaska and alerted to the executive briefing area, heading for what everyone learns is its objective: central Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while undertaking an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re left pondering where this feature-length movie can possibly proceed once the timer hits zero.
The response – and this is where the letdowns start – is a revisit of the opening: the film then shifts between the viewpoints of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the prologue glimpsed or heard only in passing. In terms of construction, the film can’t develop: it’s a two-hour movie with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel multiple times, each pass trowelling on contested bureaucratic steps while moving all parties toward the dreaded big bang. Prior Bigelow films had a strong control on cause-and-effect; her finest achievements as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the triggering event is also the final play; the narrative captivates at the very second the film ends. The characters are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.
Stylistic and Conceptual Issues
While the scenario cycles in diminishing returns, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve sufficient moments to ponder the negative impact platform financing has had on the aesthetic of Hollywood productions. Even on the large screen, Dynamite seemed flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings reusing familiar locations, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director fades away, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that opening reel as possibly one more of this director’s tough-minded working women, leaves the story too soon, so once more it’s the responsibility of a collection of stern males to try to prevent the world’s end. The energy Bigelow brought to her pulpier breakthrough films disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the artist felt she had to rein in her risk-taking, but a script this talky required some balancing visual flair.
The Core Fear and Final Analysis
The fear A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t global eradication, but a director’s terror of being considered inadequate; tensing up and practically fossilising as it goes along, it’s not unexpected the film should have been surpassed by recent, recontextualising events. What this screenplay takes for granted is that those holding roles of command would be skilled experts, deeply responsible and that the greatest danger to Chicago in late 2025 would come from an origin beyond the White House. Where previous Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their time, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s newer films to fall in the space between afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours clawing futilely behind the curve. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the stray rocket first is detected, the United States Bigelow’s film depicts has been destroyed utterly.
