Bestowed upon an elite few, the mantle of Esteemed Director can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the beneficial side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this perspective, cinema analysts may feel compelled to defend even their poorest efforts. (The logic is that a disappointing film by a Noted Film-maker is still superior to the best work of a routine filmmaker.) One downside is that such accolades can restrict a creative to a very narrow courtyard, pursuing exclusively material suitable for a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the frustration when a project falls flat is even more pronounced. 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 texts from cinephile pals are any indication – seems destined for only one honor this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
Retracing the Director's Steps
To ascertain the reasons the film has disappointed many, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow built her reputation with a series of versatile and dynamic movies: biker flick The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the classic 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 functioned as a moral story about the dangers of abandoning reality to take cover in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her homeland – was pushed into a reactive stance. 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 deep-seated legacy of racism.
It's easy to see why a artist following this path might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who scripted Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the platform would vigorously back a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One pitch 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 short interval in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific by unidentified actors is picked up on screens of a United States outpost in Alaska and alerted to the presidential command center, heading for what everyone learns is its objective: downtown Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim briskly accelerate the stakes while undertaking an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re left pondering where this feature-length movie can possibly head once the chronometer reaches zero.
The outcome – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is a return to the start: the film then shifts between the angles of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the introduction briefly seen or mentioned. From a narrative standpoint, the film is unable to advance: it’s a two-hour movie with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment multiple times, each pass layering on contested bureaucratic steps while moving all parties toward the feared explosion. Previous Bigelow films had a firm hold on cause-and-effect; her best films as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the catalytic moment is also the final play; the narrative captivates at the very second the film fades to black. The figures are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for separate causes.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the situation revolves in shrinking loops, like a doomy Groundhog Day, 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 appeared as dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content employing identical backdrops, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist disappears, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that initial segment as possibly one more of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, clocks off early, so yet again it’s the responsibility of a group of serious male figures to try to stop doomsday. The passion Bigelow contributed to her pulpier breakthrough films vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the film-maker felt she had to restrain her bold choices, but a script this verbose required some compensatory pyrotechnics.
Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts
The fear A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a artist's anxiety of being thought unworthy; stiffening and almost petrifying as it progresses, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been overtaken by recent, recontextualising events. What this story takes for granted is that those occupying positions of operational authority would be skilled experts, conscientious to the core and that the greatest danger to Chicago in late 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where previous Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their era, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s latest projects to fall in a gray area of afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime scrabbling around hopelessly out of touch. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the rogue missile first registers on a radar, the America Bigelow’s film depicts has been destroyed utterly.
