Bestowed upon a select group, the designation of Noted Film-maker can serve as an honor and a weight. On the beneficial side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this perspective, cinema analysts may feel pressured to justify even their weakest efforts. (The rationale is that a lackluster film by a Noted Film-maker is still more valuable than the best work of a routine filmmaker.) One disadvantage is that such accolades can limit a creative to a very narrow courtyard, pursuing exclusively material worthy of a Noted Film-maker; another is that the frustration when a project fails to ignite is even more pronounced. A notable test case has made its way to Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if feedback from movie enthusiasts are any measure – seems assured of only one award this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
Retracing the Director's Steps
To determine why the film has underwhelmed so, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow earned her laurels with a series of broad, agile genre films: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the timeless Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. Clearer indication of her creative evolution came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an electrifying near-future drama, shaped by the Rodney King incident, which also served as a warning tale about the perils of abandoning reality to take cover in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more alert to this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her the United States – was pushed into a reactive stance. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty broached America’s recent military engagements in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, entered into a heated debate with the country’s deep-seated legacy 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 wrote Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the platform would vigorously back a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One pitch for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses
Dynamite is at its strongest early on, depicting in near real-time the short interval in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by unknown parties is spotted on the radars of a US army base in Alaska and reported to the White House situation room, traveling to what everyone learns is its destination: downtown Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while undertaking an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re made to question where this two-hour film can possibly go once the timer expires.
The answer – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is a return to the start: the film later moves between the angles of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the prologue only partially revealed. From a narrative standpoint, the film fails to progress: it’s a extended runtime with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel multiple times, every iteration trowelling on debated technical details while moving all parties toward the feared explosion. Earlier Bigelow films had a tight grip on action and consequence; her most successful works as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the inciting incident is also the concluding action; the narrative captivates at the exact moment the film fades to black. The figures are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for separate causes.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the plot spins in ever decreasing circles, like a bleak repetitive cycle, we’ve ample time to reflect on the deleterious effect Netflix money has had on the aesthetic of Hollywood productions. Even on the big screen, Dynamite seemed uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing recalling 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases recycling the same sets, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist disappears, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that opening reel as potentially another of this director’s tough-minded working women, leaves the story too soon, so again it’s the responsibility of a group of serious male figures to try to prevent the world’s end. The passion Bigelow contributed to her grittier initial successes is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the director felt she had to restrain her risk-taking, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some balancing visual flair.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The fear A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a artist's anxiety of being deemed insufficient; stiffening and practically fossilising as it goes along, it’s not unexpected the film should have been surpassed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this script assumes is that those holding roles of command would be qualified professionals, conscientious to the core and that the greatest danger to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where previous Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their time, Dynamite – the first of this director’s latest projects to fall in a gray area of afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime struggling aimlessly behind the curve. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the unauthorized projectile first registers on a radar, the United States Bigelow’s film portrays has been destroyed utterly.
