Bestowed upon an elite few, the mantle of Esteemed Director can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the beneficial side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this lens, cinema analysts may feel obliged to defend even their least successful efforts. (The logic is that a lackluster film by a Renowned Director is still superior to the best work of a commercial director.) One drawback is that such titles can limit a creative to a tight creative box, seeking out material suitable for a Noted Film-maker; another is that the frustration when a project falls flat is even more pronounced. A high-profile example has made its way to Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if messages from film buff friends are any guide – seems destined for only one recognition this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
Retracing the Director's Steps
To determine why the film has disappointed many, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow established her acclaim with a run of broad, agile genre films: biker flick The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the enduring action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. Clearer indication of her artistic path came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an gripping future-now thriller, informed by the Rodney King case, which also served as a cautionary fable about the risks of rejecting actuality to find refuge in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her native country – was pushed into a reactive stance. 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 contentious dialogue with the country’s long history of racism.
One can appreciate why a film-maker on this trajectory might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who scripted Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the streamer would strongly support a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One idea for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its most effective early on, depicting in near real-time the brief period in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific region by mysterious forces is detected by sensors of a US army base in Alaska and reported to the executive briefing area, heading for what everyone learns is its target: central Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim briskly accelerate the stakes while undertaking an intriguing temporal brinkmanship: we’re left pondering where this full-length production can possibly go once the timer hits zero.
The response – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is a revisit of the opening: the film later moves between the angles of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ general, secretary of defence Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the opening scene glimpsed or heard only in passing. In terms of construction, the film fails to progress: it’s a lengthy film with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section again and again, each repetition layering on moot procedural points while edging everybody closer the anticipated detonation. Prior Bigelow films had a firm hold on action and consequence; her best films as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the inciting incident is also the final play; the narrative captivates at the precise instant the film concludes. The figures are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for different reasons.
Visual and Thematic Shortcomings
While the plot spins in ever decreasing circles, like a bleak repetitive cycle, we’ve plenty of opportunity to reflect on the negative impact Netflix money has had on the visual style of American cinema. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite seemed uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing recalling 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases employing identical backdrops, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist fades away, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that beginning part as perhaps an additional of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, exits prematurely, so once more it’s the responsibility of a collection of stern males to try to stop doomsday. The energy Bigelow contributed to her more genre-oriented early hits vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the artist felt she had to rein in her risk-taking, but a script this verbose required some offsetting dramatic intensity.
Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts
The dread A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a director’s terror of being considered inadequate; stiffening and practically fossilising as it goes along, it’s understandable the film should have been overtaken by recent, recontextualising events. What this screenplay presumes is that those occupying positions of operational authority would be trained specialists, fundamentally diligent and that the greatest danger to Chicago in late 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their moment, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s latest projects to fall somewhere between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime struggling aimlessly behind the curve. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the rogue missile first is detected, the nation Bigelow’s film depicts has been blown to smithereens.
