Bestowed upon an elite few, the title of Esteemed Director can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the favorable side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an celebrated director through this prism, cinema analysts may feel obliged to justify even their least successful efforts. (The logic is that a disappointing film by a Noted Film-maker is still better than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One disadvantage is that such titles can confine a creative to a very narrow courtyard, searching only for material suitable for a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the dismay when a project doesn't spark is even more pronounced. A notable test case has just reached Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if texts from cinephile pals are any measure – seems destined for only one award this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
Retracing the Director's Steps
To understand why the film has disappointed many, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow earned her laurels with a run of expansive, limber genre pics: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the classic action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. Clearer indication of her artistic path came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an gripping near-future drama, shaped by the Rodney King case, which also served as a warning tale about the perils of rejecting actuality to take cover in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more alert 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 fame expanding, Bigelow – like her the United States – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty broached 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 extended past of racism.
One can appreciate why a artist following this path might be interested in Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who scripted Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the streamer would enthusiastically stump for a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One idea for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, depicting in near real-time the brief period in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific by unknown parties is detected by sensors of a US army base in Alaska and reported to the White House situation room, en route towards what everyone learns is its objective: downtown Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while engaging in an compelling countdown strategy: we’re set to wondering where this feature-length movie can possibly go once the timer expires.
The answer – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is a revisit of the opening: the film then shifts between the viewpoints of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the opening scene only partially revealed. Structurally, the film fails to progress: it’s a two-hour movie with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment repeatedly, each repetition adding on debated technical details while moving all parties toward the dreaded big bang. Previous Bigelow films had a tight grip on action and consequence; her best films as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the triggering event is also the final play; the drama gets interesting at the very second the film ends. The personas are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.
Stylistic and Conceptual Issues
While the scenario cycles in diminishing returns, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve plenty of opportunity to reflect on the deleterious effect Netflix money has had on the aesthetic of Hollywood productions. Even on the big screen, Dynamite struck the eye as flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming recalling 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings recycling the same sets, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist fades away, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that opening reel as possibly one more of this director’s strong female professionals, exits prematurely, so once more it’s left to a group of serious male figures to try to prevent the world’s end. The verve Bigelow contributed to her pulpier breakthrough films vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the film-maker felt she had to curb her experimental tendencies, but a script this verbose required some balancing visual flair.
Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts
The anxiety A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a artist's anxiety of being deemed insufficient; stiffening and virtually solidifying as it goes along, it’s understandable the film should have been overtaken by contemporary, reframing developments. What this script assumes is that those occupying positions of operational authority would be qualified professionals, deeply responsible and that the greatest danger to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from an origin beyond the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their moment, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s recent works to fall somewhere between afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours clawing futilely behind the curve. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the stray rocket first is detected, the nation Bigelow’s film describes has been shattered completely.
