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 act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this prism, auteurist critics may feel obliged to justify even their poorest efforts. (The logic is that a disappointing film by a Prestigious Auteur is still more valuable than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One disadvantage is that such titles can limit a creative to a constrained space, searching only for material worthy of a Noted Film-maker; another is that the frustration when a project falls flat is even more pronounced. A notable instance has recently arrived on Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if feedback from movie enthusiasts are any measure – seems destined for only one honor this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
Retracing the Director's Steps
To understand why the film has underwhelmed so, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow established her acclaim with a series of broad, agile genre films: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, cop thriller 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 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an gripping sci-fi suspense story, informed by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also functioned as a warning tale about the perils of abandoning reality to take cover in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her reputation growing, 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 contentious dialogue with the country’s extended past of racism.
You can understand why a film-maker on this trajectory might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who scripted Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the service would vigorously back a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One idea for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its strongest early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the short interval in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by mysterious forces is spotted on the radars of a American military installation in Alaska and alerted to the White House situation room, traveling to what everyone learns is its objective: the heart of Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while undertaking an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re made to question where this feature-length movie can possibly head once the countdown clock hits zero.
The outcome – and this is where the letdowns start – is a return to the start: the film then shifts between the viewpoints of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ general, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene glimpsed or heard only in passing. Structurally, the film is unable to advance: 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 edging everybody closer the dreaded big bang. Prior Bigelow films had a tight grip on action and consequence; 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 final play; the drama gets interesting at the precise instant the film concludes. The characters are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for separate causes.
Stylistic and Conceptual Issues
While the scenario spins in ever decreasing circles, like a bleak repetitive cycle, we’ve plenty of opportunity to reflect on the harmful influence Netflix money has had on the look of Hollywood productions. Even on the large screen, Dynamite seemed flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings reusing familiar locations, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director fades away, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that opening reel as perhaps an additional of this director’s strong female professionals, leaves the story too soon, so once more it’s up to a cabal of frowning men to try to prevent the world’s end. The energy Bigelow brought to her grittier initial successes vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the artist felt she had to curb her risk-taking, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some compensatory pyrotechnics.
Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts
The fear A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a filmmaker's fear of being deemed insufficient; tensing up and practically fossilising as it goes along, it’s understandable the film should have been overtaken by contemporary, reframing developments. What this script presumes is that those occupying positions of operational authority would be qualified professionals, fundamentally diligent and that the greatest danger to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like intensely involved commentaries on their era, Dynamite – the first of this director’s recent works to fall in a gray area of afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime struggling aimlessly outdated. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the unauthorized projectile first registers on a radar, the United States Bigelow’s film depicts has been shattered completely.
