Bestowed upon a select group, the mantle of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the favorable side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an celebrated director through this prism, auteurist critics may feel compelled to justify even their least successful efforts. (The rationale is that a subpar film by a Noted Film-maker is still better than the best work of a routine filmmaker.) One drawback is that such titles can restrict a creative to a very narrow courtyard, searching only for material worthy of a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the dismay when a project fails to ignite is even more pronounced. A prominent example has recently arrived on Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if feedback from movie enthusiasts are any measure – seems destined for only one honor this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
Retracing the Director's Steps
To ascertain the reasons the film has disappointed many, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow built her reputation with a series of versatile and dynamic movies: biker flick The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the timeless Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. Clearer indication of her direction of travel came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an gripping future-now thriller, influenced by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also doubled as a cautionary fable about the perils of abandoning reality to find refuge in the virtual realm. (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 homeland – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed America’s contemporary conflicts in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the period following the Charlottesville events, entered into a heated debate with the country’s extended past of racism.
It's easy to see why a artist following this path might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who penned Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the service would enthusiastically stump for a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One concept for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, describing in something like real time the 19 minutes in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by unidentified actors is detected by sensors of a US army base in Alaska and flagged to the White House situation room, en route towards what everyone learns is its destination: central Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim briskly accelerate the stakes while undertaking an intriguing temporal brinkmanship: we’re left pondering where this feature-length movie can possibly proceed once the timer reaches zero.
The response – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is a return to the start: the film later moves between the viewpoints of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the prologue glimpsed or heard only in passing. In terms of construction, the film can’t develop: it’s a extended runtime with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment multiple times, each pass trowelling on debated technical details while inching everyone nearer the dreaded big bang. Earlier 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 definitionally all consequence. But here, the triggering event is also the concluding action; the story becomes engaging at the precise instant the film concludes. The characters are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for different reasons.
Stylistic and Conceptual Issues
While the situation spins in ever decreasing circles, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve sufficient moments to ponder the deleterious effect platform financing has had on the look of American cinema. 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 recent Netflix content recycling the same sets, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director fades away, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that initial segment as potentially another of this director’s tough-minded working women, clocks off early, so yet again it’s up to a cabal of frowning men to try to prevent the world’s end. The energy Bigelow infused into her pulpier breakthrough films disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the artist felt she had to rein in her experimental tendencies, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some balancing visual flair.
The Core Fear and Final Analysis
The fear A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a director’s terror of being deemed insufficient; tensing up and practically fossilising as it unfolds, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been surpassed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this script presumes is that those holding roles of command would be qualified professionals, fundamentally diligent and that the largest risk to Chicago in late 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like intensely involved commentaries on their era, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s newer films to fall in a gray area of neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends two listless hours struggling aimlessly outdated. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the rogue missile first is detected, the nation Bigelow’s film portrays has been destroyed utterly.
