Bestowed upon an elite few, the title of Esteemed Director can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the positive side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this perspective, cinema analysts may feel pressured to justify even their poorest efforts. (The reasoning 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 titles can limit a creative to a very narrow courtyard, seeking out material worthy of a Esteemed Director; another is that the dismay when a project fails to ignite is significantly amplified. A notable instance has just reached Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if texts from cinephile pals are any guide – seems destined for only one award this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey
To determine why the film has disappointed many, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow built her reputation with a run of broad, agile genre films: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the enduring 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 gripping sci-fi suspense story, informed by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also functioned as a moral story about the dangers of abandoning reality to take cover in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, now preparing the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her the United States – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed America’s then-recent misadventures 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.
One can appreciate why a film-maker on this trajectory might be interested in Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who penned Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the streamer would strongly support a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One idea for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its strongest early on, describing in something like real time the short interval in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific by mysterious forces is detected by sensors of a United States outpost in Alaska and reported to the presidential command center, heading for what everyone learns is its destination: the heart of Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while participating in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re left pondering where this full-length production can possibly head once the countdown clock reaches zero.
The answer – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is back to the beginning: the film subsequently shuffles between the angles of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ military officer, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene glimpsed or heard only in passing. From a narrative standpoint, the film fails to progress: it’s a two-hour movie with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel repeatedly, each pass adding on debated technical details while edging everybody closer the anticipated detonation. Prior Bigelow films had a firm hold on stimulus and response; her most successful works as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the catalytic moment is also the final play; the narrative captivates at the very second the film fades to black. The personas are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for different reasons.
Stylistic and Conceptual Issues
While the scenario spins in ever decreasing circles, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve sufficient moments to ponder the harmful influence streaming budgets has had on the aesthetic of American cinema. Even on the big screen, Dynamite struck the eye as uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming evoking 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings reusing familiar locations, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker disappears, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that initial segment as potentially another of this director’s strong female professionals, leaves the story too soon, so again it’s the responsibility of a group of serious male figures to try to stop doomsday. The energy Bigelow contributed to her more genre-oriented early hits is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the film-maker felt she had to curb her bold choices, but a script this talky required some balancing visual flair.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The dread A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t global eradication, but a director’s terror of being deemed insufficient; becoming rigid and almost petrifying as it unfolds, it’s not unexpected the film should have been overtaken by recent, recontextualising events. What this story presumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be skilled experts, conscientious to the core and that the largest risk to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like intensely involved commentaries on their moment, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s newer films to fall in the space between afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours scrabbling around hopelessly out of touch. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the stray rocket first registers on a radar, the United States Bigelow’s film portrays has been blown to smithereens.
