Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the title 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 celebrated director through this prism, auteurist critics may feel compelled to justify even their weakest efforts. (The logic is that a lackluster film by a Renowned Director is still more valuable than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One disadvantage is that such accolades can confine a creative to a very narrow courtyard, seeking out material befitting a Esteemed Director; another is that the dismay when a project doesn't spark is significantly amplified. A notable example has just reached Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if texts from cinephile pals are any indication – seems destined for only one award this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
Examining Bigelow's Career Path
To determine why the film has failed to impress, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow built her reputation with a succession of expansive, limber genre pics: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the enduring action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. Clearer indication of her artistic path came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an intense future-now thriller, shaped by the Rodney King incident, which also doubled as a warning tale about the risks of escaping from the real world to seek shelter in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her homeland – was pushed into a reactive stance. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed America’s recent military engagements in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the summer of Charlottesville, entered into a contentious dialogue with the country’s deep-seated legacy of racism.
It's easy to see why a film-maker on this trajectory might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who penned Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the service would enthusiastically stump for a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One concept for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)
The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses
Dynamite is at its most effective early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the 19 minutes in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by unknown parties is picked up on screens of a United States outpost in Alaska and reported to the presidential command center, en route towards what everyone learns is its objective: downtown Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while participating in an compelling countdown strategy: we’re set to wondering where this feature-length movie can possibly head once the chronometer reaches zero.
The response – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is a return to the start: the film then shifts between the viewpoints of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the introduction briefly seen or mentioned. Structurally, the film can’t develop: it’s a lengthy film with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section multiple times, every iteration layering on moot procedural points while edging everybody closer the dreaded big bang. Prior Bigelow films had a strong control on action and consequence; her most successful works as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the inciting incident is also the concluding action; the narrative captivates at the precise instant the film fades to black. The characters are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for separate causes.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the plot spins in ever decreasing circles, like a bleak repetitive cycle, we’ve ample time to consider the harmful influence streaming budgets has had on the look of Hollywood productions. Even on the big screen, Dynamite appeared as uninspired and typical, 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 Noted Visual Film-maker fades away, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that opening reel as possibly one more of this director’s strong female professionals, clocks off early, so once more it’s left to a cabal of frowning men to try to avert global catastrophe. The passion Bigelow infused into her grittier initial successes vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the director felt she had to curb her experimental tendencies, but a script this verbose required some compensatory pyrotechnics.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The fear A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a artist's anxiety of being thought unworthy; becoming rigid and almost petrifying as it unfolds, it’s understandable the film should have been surpassed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this script takes for granted is that those in charge of critical decisions would be skilled experts, deeply responsible and that the biggest threat to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their era, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s latest projects to fall somewhere between afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime struggling aimlessly behind the curve. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the rogue missile first is detected, the United States Bigelow’s film portrays has been destroyed utterly.
