Bestowed upon an elite few, the mantle of Noted Film-maker can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the beneficial side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an celebrated director through this lens, cinema analysts may feel compelled to make excuses for even their weakest efforts. (The rationale is that a disappointing film by a Renowned Director is still more valuable than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One downside is that such honorifics can restrict a creative to a constrained space, searching only for material befitting a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the frustration when a project doesn't spark is significantly amplified. A prominent instance has recently arrived on Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if messages from film buff friends are any measure – seems nailed on for only one honor this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.
Examining Bigelow's Career Path
To understand why the film has underwhelmed so, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow earned her laurels with a run of versatile and dynamic movies: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the timeless Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. Clearer indication of her creative evolution came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an intense future-now thriller, informed by the Rodney King incident, which also doubled as a warning tale about the dangers of abandoning reality to take cover in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, now preparing the release of Avatar 3.) Yet post-2001, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her homeland – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled America’s then-recent misadventures in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the summer of Charlottesville, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s long history of racism.
One can appreciate why a film-maker on this trajectory might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who scripted Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the platform would vigorously back a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One concept for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its strongest early on, depicting in near real-time the 19 minutes in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific by mysterious forces is spotted on the radars of a American military installation in Alaska and reported to the presidential command center, traveling to what everyone learns is its objective: the heart of Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while engaging in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re made to question where this two-hour film can possibly proceed once the timer reaches zero.
The response – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is a return to the start: the film then shifts between the viewpoints of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene glimpsed or heard only in passing. In terms of construction, the film can’t develop: it’s a lengthy film with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel repeatedly, each repetition layering on debated technical details while inching everyone nearer the dreaded big bang. Previous Bigelow films had a firm hold on cause-and-effect; her best films as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the inciting incident is also the concluding action; the drama gets interesting at the very second the film ends. The characters are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for separate causes.
Visual and Thematic Shortcomings
While the scenario spins in ever decreasing circles, like a bleak repetitive cycle, we’ve sufficient moments to consider the deleterious effect platform financing has had on the visual style of Hollywood productions. Even on the big screen, Dynamite seemed flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings recycling the same sets, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker disappears, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that beginning part as perhaps an additional of this director’s strong female professionals, leaves the story too soon, so yet 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 vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the film-maker felt she had to curb her risk-taking, but a script this verbose required some compensatory pyrotechnics.
Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts
The dread A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a filmmaker's fear of being considered inadequate; tensing up and virtually solidifying as it goes along, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been eclipsed by current, reshaping incidents. What this screenplay assumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be qualified professionals, fundamentally diligent and that the biggest threat to Chicago in late 2025 would come from an origin beyond the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their time, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s latest projects to fall in the space between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours scrabbling around hopelessly outdated. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the unauthorized projectile first appears on sensors, the nation Bigelow’s film depicts has been destroyed utterly.
