Bestowed upon a select group, the designation of Noted Film-maker can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the beneficial side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an celebrated director through this lens, film scholars may feel pressured to justify even their weakest efforts. (The reasoning is that a subpar film by a Renowned Director is still superior to the best work of a jobbing hack.) One drawback is that such accolades can restrict a creative to a constrained space, pursuing exclusively material worthy of a Noted Film-maker; another is that the frustration when a project doesn't spark is all the greater. A notable test case has made its way to Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if texts from cinephile pals are any guide – seems assured of only one honor this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.
Retracing the Director's Steps
To determine why the film has failed to impress, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow earned her laurels with a run of expansive, limber genre pics: biker flick The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the classic Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. Clearer indication of her artistic path came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an intense sci-fi suspense story, informed by the Rodney King incident, which also served as a moral story about the perils of abandoning reality to seek shelter in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more alert to this than her ex-partner and writer 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 addressed America’s recent military engagements in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the summer of Charlottesville, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s deep-seated legacy of racism.
One can appreciate why a film-maker on this trajectory might be interested in 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 atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One concept for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, describing in something like real time the brief period in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific region by mysterious forces is spotted on the radars of a American military installation in Alaska and alerted to the executive briefing area, heading for what everyone learns is its objective: downtown Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while participating in an intriguing temporal brinkmanship: we’re left pondering where this feature-length movie can possibly head once the countdown clock expires.
The response – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is back to the beginning: the film later moves between the angles of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the introduction only partially revealed. In terms of construction, the film fails to progress: it’s a two-hour movie with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section again and again, every iteration adding on moot procedural points while inching everyone nearer the dreaded big bang. Previous Bigelow films had a tight grip on action and consequence; her finest achievements as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the inciting incident is also the concluding action; the drama gets interesting at the exact moment the film ends. The personas are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the scenario spins in ever decreasing circles, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve ample time to ponder the harmful influence platform financing has had on the aesthetic of U.S. films. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite struck the eye as dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content reusing familiar locations, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist fades away, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that opening reel as perhaps an additional of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, leaves the story too soon, so once more it’s the responsibility of a cabal of frowning men to try to prevent the world’s end. The energy Bigelow infused into her grittier initial successes disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the film-maker felt she had to rein in her bold choices, but a script this verbose required some balancing visual flair.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The anxiety A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a filmmaker's fear of being considered inadequate; stiffening and practically fossilising as it progresses, it’s not unexpected the film should have been eclipsed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this script assumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be trained specialists, 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 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 pair of lethargic hours struggling aimlessly out of touch. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the rogue missile first appears on sensors, the America Bigelow’s film describes has been blown to smithereens.
