Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the mantle 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 perspective, film scholars may feel compelled to justify even their weakest efforts. (The reasoning is that a subpar film by a Renowned Director is still better than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One drawback is that such honorifics can restrict a creative to a constrained space, seeking out material befitting a Esteemed Director; another is that the frustration when a project falls flat is significantly amplified. A notable test case has recently arrived on Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if feedback from movie enthusiasts are any indication – seems destined for only one honor this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.
Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey
To determine why the film has disappointed many, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow earned her laurels with a succession of versatile and dynamic movies: biker flick 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 overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an electrifying future-now thriller, shaped by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also doubled as a cautionary fable about the perils of abandoning reality to take cover in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, now preparing the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her homeland – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty broached America’s contemporary conflicts in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, entered into a heated debate with the country’s extended past of racism.
You can understand why a director with this background might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who scripted Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the service would enthusiastically stump for a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One pitch for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses
Dynamite is at its most effective early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the short interval in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific by mysterious forces is spotted on the radars of a US army base in Alaska and alerted to the executive briefing area, heading for what everyone learns is its destination: downtown Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while undertaking an compelling countdown strategy: we’re left pondering where this feature-length movie can possibly head once the countdown clock expires.
The answer – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is a return to the start: the film later moves between the viewpoints of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ military officer, secretary of defence Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the prologue briefly seen or mentioned. From a narrative standpoint, the film can’t develop: it’s a extended runtime with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel again and again, every iteration trowelling on contested bureaucratic steps while inching everyone nearer the feared explosion. Prior Bigelow films had a tight grip on cause-and-effect; her finest achievements as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the triggering event is also the concluding action; the story becomes engaging at the very second the film concludes. The personas are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for separate causes.
Stylistic and Conceptual Issues
While the scenario spins in ever decreasing circles, like a bleak repetitive cycle, we’ve sufficient moments to reflect on the deleterious effect streaming budgets has had on the look of Hollywood productions. Even on the big screen, Dynamite appeared as dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming 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, sketched in that initial segment as potentially another of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, exits prematurely, so yet again it’s up to a group of serious male figures to try to stop doomsday. The passion Bigelow infused into her pulpier breakthrough films vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the artist felt she had to restrain her experimental tendencies, but a script this verbose required some compensatory pyrotechnics.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The fear A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a filmmaker's fear of being considered inadequate; tensing up and practically fossilising as it goes along, it’s understandable the film should have been surpassed by recent, recontextualising events. What this script takes for granted is that those occupying positions of operational authority would be skilled experts, fundamentally diligent and that the biggest threat to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their time, Dynamite – the first of this director’s recent works to fall somewhere between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime clawing futilely out of touch. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the rogue missile first is detected, the America Bigelow’s film describes has been destroyed utterly.
