Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the mantle of Noted Film-maker can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the beneficial side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this prism, film scholars may feel obliged to defend even their poorest efforts. (The logic is that a lackluster film by a Noted Film-maker is still more valuable than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One disadvantage is that such accolades can limit a creative to a very narrow courtyard, seeking out material befitting a Esteemed Director; another is that the frustration when a project doesn't spark is significantly amplified. A prominent instance has made its way to Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if texts from cinephile pals are any guide – seems assured of only one recognition this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.
Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey
To determine why the film has disappointed many, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow built her reputation with a series of expansive, limber genre pics: biker flick The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the classic Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A more definite sign of her artistic path came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an gripping near-future drama, influenced by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also served as a cautionary fable about the perils of escaping from the real world to seek shelter in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her the United States – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed America’s recent military engagements in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the period following the Charlottesville events, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s extended past of racism.
You can understand why a director with this background might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who penned Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the platform would vigorously back a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One idea for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its most effective early on, depicting in near real-time the 19 minutes in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific region by unknown parties is detected by sensors of a United States outpost in Alaska and reported to the executive briefing area, en route towards what everyone learns is its objective: the heart of Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while engaging in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re set to wondering where this full-length production can possibly head once the chronometer reaches zero.
The response – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is back to the beginning: the film subsequently shuffles between the angles of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene briefly seen or mentioned. Structurally, the film fails to progress: it’s a lengthy film with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment repeatedly, each pass layering on moot procedural points while moving all parties toward the anticipated detonation. Prior Bigelow films had a firm hold on action and consequence; her finest achievements as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the triggering event is also the endgame; the story becomes engaging at the exact moment the film concludes. The characters are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for different reasons.
Stylistic and Conceptual Issues
While the scenario cycles in diminishing returns, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve ample time to ponder the negative impact streaming budgets has had on the visual style of Hollywood productions. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite seemed dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing evoking 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content recycling the same sets, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist disappears, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that beginning part as potentially another of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, exits prematurely, so once more it’s up to a cabal of frowning men to try to prevent the world’s end. The passion Bigelow infused into her pulpier breakthrough films vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the director felt she had to curb her experimental tendencies, but a script this talky required some offsetting dramatic intensity.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The fear A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a artist's anxiety of being deemed insufficient; becoming rigid and almost petrifying as it unfolds, it’s not unexpected the film should have been surpassed by recent, recontextualising events. What this story assumes is that those holding roles of command would be skilled experts, conscientious to the core and that the greatest danger to Chicago in the latter part of 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their era, Dynamite – the first of this director’s latest projects to fall somewhere between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours scrabbling around hopelessly out of touch. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the stray rocket first appears on sensors, the nation Bigelow’s film portrays has been shattered completely.
