Bestowed upon a select group, the title of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the positive side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this lens, auteurist critics may feel pressured to defend even their weakest efforts. (The logic is that a disappointing film by a Noted Film-maker is still superior to the best work of a commercial director.) One downside is that such titles can limit a creative to a constrained space, pursuing exclusively material worthy of a Esteemed Director; another is that the frustration when a project fails to ignite is all the greater. A high-profile instance has just reached Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if texts from cinephile pals are any indication – seems nailed on for only one honor this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
Examining Bigelow's Career Path
To ascertain the reasons the film has underwhelmed so, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow built her reputation with a run of expansive, limber genre pics: biker flick The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the classic Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A more definite sign of her artistic path came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an gripping near-future drama, shaped by the Rodney King incident, which also served as a warning tale about the risks of abandoning reality to seek shelter 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 following the turn of the millennium, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her homeland – was forced on the defensive. 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 heated debate with the country’s extended past of racism.
You can understand why a film-maker on this trajectory might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who wrote Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the platform would vigorously back a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One idea for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)
High Points and Low Points
Dynamite is at its most effective early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the 19 minutes in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by mysterious forces is detected by sensors of a US army base in Alaska and reported to the presidential command center, traveling to what everyone learns is its destination: the heart of Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while participating in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re left pondering where this feature-length movie can possibly proceed once the countdown clock reaches zero.
The answer – 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’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene briefly seen or mentioned. Structurally, the film can’t develop: it’s a lengthy film with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel repeatedly, every iteration trowelling on contested bureaucratic steps while inching everyone nearer the dreaded big bang. Prior 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 fundamentally focused on results. But here, the triggering event is also the final play; the drama gets interesting at the very second the film ends. The figures are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for separate causes.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the scenario revolves in shrinking loops, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve ample time to reflect on the negative impact Netflix money has had on the aesthetic of American cinema. Even on the big screen, Dynamite struck the eye as flatly familiar, 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 Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that opening reel as perhaps an additional of this director’s strong female professionals, exits prematurely, so again it’s the responsibility of a group of serious male figures to try to stop doomsday. The energy Bigelow contributed to her more genre-oriented early hits disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the artist felt she had to curb her bold choices, but a script this verbose required some compensatory pyrotechnics.
Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts
The fear A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t global eradication, but a director’s terror of being deemed insufficient; tensing up and practically fossilising as it unfolds, it’s understandable the film should have been surpassed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this script assumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be qualified professionals, fundamentally diligent and that the largest risk to Chicago in late 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their time, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s latest projects to fall in a gray area of afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends two listless hours scrabbling around hopelessly out of touch. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the stray rocket first registers on a radar, the United States Bigelow’s film describes has been shattered completely.
