Bestowed upon a select group, the mantle of Noted Film-maker can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the positive side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this lens, film scholars may feel compelled to defend even their least successful efforts. (The logic is that a disappointing film by a Renowned Director is still superior to the best work of a jobbing hack.) One downside is that such accolades can limit a creative to a very narrow courtyard, pursuing exclusively material befitting a Noted Film-maker; another is that the frustration when a project fails to ignite is significantly amplified. A high-profile example has made its way to Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if messages from film buff friends are any measure – seems destined for only one recognition this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
Retracing the Director's Steps
To determine why the film has disappointed many, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow established her acclaim with a series of expansive, limber genre pics: biker flick The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the enduring Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. Clearer indication of her direction of travel came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an intense near-future drama, shaped by the Rodney King case, which also doubled as a warning tale about the perils of rejecting actuality to seek shelter in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her the United States – was pushed into a reactive stance. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled America’s then-recent misadventures in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, entered into a contentious dialogue with the country’s long history of racism.
One can appreciate why a artist following this path might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who penned Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the platform would enthusiastically stump for a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One pitch for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its most effective early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the 19 minutes in which a rocket sent 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, heading for what everyone learns is its target: the heart of Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim briskly accelerate the stakes while engaging in an intriguing temporal brinkmanship: we’re left pondering where this feature-length movie can possibly go once the timer hits zero.
The response – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is back to the beginning: the film then shifts between the angles of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ general, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the introduction briefly seen or mentioned. In terms of construction, the film is unable to advance: it’s a two-hour movie with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment again and again, each repetition layering on contested bureaucratic steps while moving all parties toward the dreaded big bang. Prior Bigelow films had a tight grip on stimulus and response; her best films as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the catalytic moment is also the endgame; the drama gets interesting at the exact moment the film concludes. The figures are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the plot revolves in shrinking loops, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve ample time to consider the deleterious effect streaming budgets has had on the visual style of U.S. films. Even on the large screen, Dynamite appeared as flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings 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 opening reel as perhaps an additional of this director’s strong female professionals, exits prematurely, so once more it’s the responsibility of a group of serious male figures to try to stop doomsday. The verve Bigelow brought to her pulpier breakthrough films disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the artist felt she had to rein in her risk-taking, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some offsetting dramatic intensity.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The dread A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t global eradication, but a artist's anxiety of being considered inadequate; tensing up and almost petrifying as it goes along, it’s not unexpected the film should have been surpassed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this script assumes is that those occupying positions of operational authority would be skilled experts, deeply responsible and that the greatest danger to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where previous Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their era, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s newer films to fall in the space between oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours struggling aimlessly behind the curve. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the unauthorized projectile first registers on a radar, the America Bigelow’s film describes has been blown to smithereens.
