Bestowed upon an elite few, the mantle of Esteemed Director can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the favorable side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this prism, auteurist critics may feel obliged to defend even their poorest efforts. (The logic is that a disappointing film by a Prestigious Auteur is still superior to the best work of a jobbing hack.) One drawback is that such accolades can confine a creative to a constrained space, pursuing exclusively material befitting a Esteemed Director; another is that the disappointment when a project falls flat is significantly amplified. A prominent test case has just reached Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if messages from film buff friends are any guide – seems destined for only one honor this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.
Examining Bigelow's Career Path
To ascertain the reasons the film has failed to impress, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow earned her laurels with a series of versatile and dynamic movies: biker flick The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the enduring Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A sharper insight of her direction of travel came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an gripping sci-fi suspense story, informed by the Rodney King case, which also functioned as a cautionary fable about the perils of abandoning reality to find refuge in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more alert to this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her native country – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled America’s recent military engagements in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, entered into a heated debate 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 – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who scripted Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the service would vigorously back a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One pitch for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)
High Points and Low Points
Dynamite is at its strongest early on, depicting in near real-time the brief period in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by mysterious forces is picked up on screens of a United States outpost in Alaska and reported to the White House situation room, traveling to what everyone learns is its target: central Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while engaging in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re left pondering where this full-length production can possibly go once the chronometer expires.
The outcome – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is back to the beginning: the film then shifts between the angles of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the introduction only partially revealed. In terms of construction, the film is unable to advance: it’s a two-hour movie with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment repeatedly, each repetition trowelling on debated technical details while moving all parties toward the dreaded big bang. Earlier Bigelow films had a strong control on cause-and-effect; her best films as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the triggering event is also the concluding action; the narrative captivates at the exact moment the film concludes. The personas are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for different reasons.
Visual and Thematic Shortcomings
While the plot cycles in diminishing returns, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve sufficient moments to consider the deleterious effect Netflix money has had on the look of U.S. films. Even on the large screen, Dynamite seemed uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork evoking 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content employing identical backdrops, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that initial segment as possibly one more of this director’s strong female professionals, exits prematurely, so yet again it’s up to a collection of stern males to try to stop doomsday. The verve Bigelow infused into her more genre-oriented early hits vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the artist felt she had to rein in her bold choices, but a script this talky required some compensatory pyrotechnics.
Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts
The fear A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a filmmaker's fear of being deemed insufficient; stiffening and practically fossilising as it goes along, it’s understandable the film should have been eclipsed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this story takes for granted is that those in charge of critical decisions would be qualified professionals, conscientious to the core and that the biggest threat to Chicago in late 2025 would come from an origin beyond the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their era, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s latest projects to fall in the space between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours struggling aimlessly behind the curve. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the rogue missile first is detected, the nation Bigelow’s film describes has been blown to smithereens.