Bestowed upon an elite few, the title of Noted Film-maker can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the positive side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this perspective, auteurist critics may feel compelled to defend even their poorest efforts. (The logic is that a lackluster film by a Prestigious Auteur is still superior to the best work of a commercial director.) One disadvantage is that such titles can confine a creative to a constrained space, searching only for material worthy of a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the disappointment when a project falls flat is significantly amplified. A prominent test case has made its way to Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if texts from cinephile pals are any guide – seems nailed on for only one honor this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
Examining Bigelow's Career Path
To determine why the film has disappointed many, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow built her reputation with a succession of versatile and dynamic movies: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the classic action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A sharper insight of her artistic path came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an electrifying near-future drama, informed by the Rodney King case, which also functioned as a cautionary fable about the dangers of abandoning reality to find refuge in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet post-2001, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her homeland – 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 period following the Charlottesville events, entered into a contentious dialogue with the country’s deep-seated legacy of racism.
One can appreciate why a artist following this path might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who wrote Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the streamer would vigorously back a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One pitch for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)
High Points and Low Points
Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, describing in something like real time the 19 minutes in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific region by unidentified actors 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 target: central Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while undertaking an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re set to wondering where this feature-length movie can possibly head once the timer expires.
The outcome – and this is where the letdowns start – is back to the beginning: the film then shifts between the viewpoints of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the opening scene briefly seen or mentioned. In terms of construction, the film fails to progress: it’s a two-hour movie with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment again and again, every iteration layering on contested bureaucratic steps while moving all parties toward the dreaded big bang. Previous Bigelow films had a tight grip on action and consequence; her finest achievements as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the triggering event is also the concluding action; the drama gets interesting at the precise instant the film fades to black. The figures are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for separate causes.
Visual and Thematic Shortcomings
While the plot cycles in diminishing returns, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve sufficient moments to ponder the deleterious effect streaming budgets has had on the visual style of Hollywood productions. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite struck the eye as flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing recalling 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings reusing familiar locations, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that opening reel as possibly one more of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, leaves the story too soon, so yet again it’s up to a collection of stern males to try to stop doomsday. The passion Bigelow infused into her pulpier breakthrough films vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the film-maker felt she had to restrain her experimental tendencies, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some balancing visual flair.
The Core Fear and Final Analysis
The anxiety A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a artist's anxiety of being considered inadequate; becoming rigid and virtually solidifying as it goes along, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been surpassed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this story takes for granted is that those in charge of critical decisions would be trained specialists, deeply responsible and that the largest risk 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 time, Dynamite – the first of this director’s newer films to fall in the space between oversight, diversion and total insignificance – 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 United States Bigelow’s film depicts has been blown to smithereens.
