Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the mantle of Noted Film-maker can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the positive side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an celebrated director through this prism, auteurist critics may feel pressured to make excuses for even their weakest efforts. (The logic is that a disappointing film by a Noted Film-maker is still better than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One downside is that such titles 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 fails to ignite is all the greater. A high-profile example has made its way to Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if messages from film buff friends are any indication – seems nailed on for only one award this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.
Examining Bigelow's Career Path
To understand 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 sprawling undead story Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the enduring action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A sharper insight of her artistic path came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an electrifying future-now thriller, influenced by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also functioned as a cautionary fable about the risks of rejecting actuality to seek shelter in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet post-2001, 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 contemporary conflicts in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the summer of Charlottesville, entered into a heated debate with the country’s long history of racism.
It's easy to see why a artist following this path might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who scripted Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the platform would enthusiastically stump for a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One pitch for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)
High Points and Low Points
Dynamite is at its most effective early on, describing in something like real time the 19 minutes in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific by unidentified actors is picked up on screens of a American military installation in Alaska and flagged to the White House situation room, en route towards what everyone learns is its target: the heart of Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while participating in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re set to wondering where this feature-length movie can possibly go once the chronometer reaches zero.
The outcome – and this is where the letdowns start – is a return to the start: the film later moves between the angles of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the opening scene only partially revealed. From a narrative standpoint, the film is unable to advance: it’s a two-hour movie with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment repeatedly, every iteration layering on debated technical details while moving all parties toward the feared explosion. Prior Bigelow films had a tight grip on cause-and-effect; her finest achievements as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the catalytic moment is also the final play; the narrative captivates at the precise instant the film ends. The personas are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for different reasons.
Stylistic and Conceptual Issues
While the plot revolves in shrinking loops, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve ample time to reflect on the deleterious effect platform financing has had on the look of Hollywood productions. Even on the large screen, Dynamite appeared as uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings recycling the same sets, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director fades away, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that initial segment as possibly one more of this director’s tough-minded working women, exits prematurely, so again it’s left to a collection of stern males to try to stop doomsday. The verve Bigelow brought to her grittier initial successes is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the director felt she had to curb her experimental tendencies, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some balancing visual flair.
The Core Fear and Final Analysis
The dread A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t global eradication, but a filmmaker's fear of being deemed insufficient; stiffening and almost petrifying as it progresses, it’s understandable the film should have been surpassed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this story presumes is that those occupying positions of operational authority would be trained specialists, deeply responsible and that the greatest danger to Chicago in the latter part of 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 recent works to fall in a gray area of oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime scrabbling around hopelessly behind the curve. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the rogue missile first is detected, the America Bigelow’s film describes has been destroyed utterly.
