Bestowed upon a select group, the title of Esteemed Director can serve as an honor and a weight. On the beneficial side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an celebrated director through this lens, auteurist critics may feel compelled to defend 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 drawback is that such honorifics can restrict a creative to a very narrow courtyard, seeking out material suitable for a Esteemed Director; another is that the disappointment when a project doesn't spark is significantly amplified. A notable instance has made its way to Netflix in the latest from 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.
Examining Bigelow's Career Path
To understand why the film has disappointed many, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow earned her laurels with a succession of versatile and dynamic movies: biker flick 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 the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an gripping future-now thriller, influenced by the Rodney King case, which also functioned as a cautionary fable about the dangers of rejecting actuality to find refuge in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more alert to this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her native country – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled America’s contemporary conflicts in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the period following the Charlottesville events, entered into a heated debate with the country’s long history of racism.
You can understand why a film-maker on this trajectory might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who wrote Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the service would strongly support a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One concept for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its strongest early on, depicting in near real-time the brief period in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific by unidentified actors is detected by sensors of a American military installation in Alaska and flagged to the White House situation room, heading for what everyone learns is its objective: the heart of Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while undertaking an compelling countdown strategy: we’re made to question where this two-hour film can possibly head once the timer reaches zero.
The outcome – and this is where the letdowns start – is a revisit of the opening: the film then shifts between the viewpoints of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the prologue only partially revealed. In terms of construction, the film fails to progress: it’s a lengthy film with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section multiple times, every iteration layering on contested bureaucratic steps while inching everyone nearer the anticipated detonation. Prior Bigelow films had a tight grip on stimulus and response; her most successful works as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the triggering event is also the concluding action; the narrative captivates at the very second the film fades to black. The personas are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the plot spins in ever decreasing circles, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve ample time to reflect on the deleterious effect platform financing has had on the look of Hollywood productions. Even on the big screen, Dynamite struck the eye as flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork recalling 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases recycling the same sets, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that beginning part as potentially another of this director’s tough-minded working women, exits prematurely, so again it’s up to a collection of stern males to try to stop doomsday. The verve Bigelow contributed to her pulpier breakthrough films vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the film-maker felt she had to rein in her bold choices, but a script this verbose required some offsetting dramatic intensity.
The Core Fear and Final Analysis
The fear A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a filmmaker's fear of being considered inadequate; tensing up and virtually solidifying as it goes along, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been overtaken by current, reshaping incidents. What this screenplay presumes is that those holding roles of command would be trained specialists, deeply responsible and that the largest risk to Chicago in the latter part of 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their time, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s recent works to fall in the space between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – 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 United States Bigelow’s film describes has been shattered completely.
