Bestowed upon a select group, 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 celebrated director through this lens, auteurist critics may feel pressured to justify even their least successful efforts. (The logic is that a lackluster film by a Noted Film-maker is still superior to the best work of a commercial director.) One disadvantage is that such accolades can limit a creative to a very narrow courtyard, seeking out material worthy of a Esteemed Director; another is that the frustration when a project fails to ignite is even more pronounced. A notable instance has recently arrived on Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if messages from film buff friends are any guide – seems nailed on for only one award this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.
Retracing the Director's Steps
To understand why the film has underwhelmed so, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow built her reputation with a run of versatile and dynamic movies: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the timeless action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A more definite sign of her direction of travel came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an gripping near-future drama, shaped by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also served as a cautionary fable about the dangers of abandoning reality to find refuge in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, now preparing the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her homeland – was forced on the defensive. 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 fractious conversation with the country’s long history of racism.
One can appreciate why a film-maker on this trajectory might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who scripted Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the streamer would strongly support a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (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, portraying in a realistic timeframe the short interval in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific by unidentified actors is detected by sensors of a American military installation in Alaska and flagged to the presidential command center, en route towards what everyone learns is its objective: the heart of Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while engaging in an intriguing temporal brinkmanship: we’re left pondering where this two-hour film can possibly proceed once the timer hits zero.
The answer – and this is where the letdowns start – is a revisit of the opening: the film subsequently shuffles between the viewpoints of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene only partially revealed. In terms of construction, the film can’t develop: it’s a lengthy film with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment repeatedly, each repetition adding on debated technical details while moving all parties toward the anticipated detonation. Earlier Bigelow films had a tight grip on cause-and-effect; her most successful works as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the triggering event is also the endgame; the drama gets interesting at the very second the film concludes. The personas are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for separate causes.
Stylistic and Conceptual Issues
While the scenario revolves in shrinking loops, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve ample time to ponder the negative impact Netflix money has had on the visual style of U.S. films. Even on the big screen, Dynamite seemed flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing evoking 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings recycling the same sets, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that initial segment as potentially another of this director’s tough-minded working women, leaves the story too soon, so once more it’s up to a collection of stern males to try to avert global catastrophe. The energy Bigelow contributed to her grittier initial successes is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the artist felt she had to restrain her experimental tendencies, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some compensatory pyrotechnics.
Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts
The dread A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a director’s terror of being considered inadequate; stiffening and practically fossilising as it unfolds, it’s not unexpected the film should have been eclipsed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this story assumes is that those holding roles of command would be qualified professionals, fundamentally diligent and that the largest risk to Chicago in the latter part of 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their era, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s recent works to fall in a gray area of afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours clawing futilely behind the curve. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the stray rocket first appears on sensors, the America Bigelow’s film portrays has been shattered completely.
