Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the title of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the beneficial side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this prism, film scholars may feel compelled to justify 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 accolades can restrict a creative to a very narrow courtyard, seeking out material suitable for a Esteemed Director; another is that the frustration when a project fails to ignite is all the greater. A notable example has made its way to Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if feedback from movie enthusiasts are any measure – seems nailed on for only one recognition this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
Retracing the Director's Steps
To ascertain the reasons the film has disappointed many, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow built her reputation with a succession of broad, agile genre films: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the timeless Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A more definite sign of her direction of travel came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an gripping near-future drama, informed by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also functioned as a cautionary fable about the perils of rejecting actuality to find refuge in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet post-2001, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her homeland – 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 summer of Charlottesville, entered into a heated debate with the country’s extended past of racism.
One can appreciate why a director with this background might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who penned Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the platform would enthusiastically stump for a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One pitch for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its strongest early on, depicting in near real-time the brief period in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by unidentified actors is picked up on screens of a United States outpost in Alaska and reported to the executive briefing area, traveling to what everyone learns is its destination: downtown Chicago. In this initial part, 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 chronometer expires.
The outcome – and this is where the letdowns start – is back to the beginning: the film then shifts between the angles of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ general, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the introduction glimpsed or heard only in passing. Structurally, the film fails to progress: it’s a extended runtime with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel again and again, each repetition adding on debated technical details while moving all parties toward the anticipated detonation. Prior Bigelow films had a firm hold on action and consequence; her most successful works as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the catalytic moment is also the endgame; the drama gets interesting at the exact moment the film concludes. The personas are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for separate causes.
Visual and Thematic Shortcomings
While the plot spins in ever decreasing circles, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve plenty of opportunity to consider the negative impact Netflix money has had on the visual style of American cinema. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite seemed dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming recalling 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content recycling the same sets, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that initial segment as potentially another of this director’s strong female professionals, leaves the story too soon, so once more it’s left to a group of serious male figures to try to prevent the world’s end. The energy Bigelow contributed to her pulpier breakthrough films vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the film-maker felt she had to restrain her risk-taking, but a script this verbose required some balancing visual flair.
Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts
The anxiety 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 overtaken by contemporary, reframing developments. What this script takes for granted is that those holding roles of command would be qualified professionals, deeply responsible 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 time, Dynamite – the first of this director’s recent works to fall somewhere between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime clawing futilely out of touch. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the rogue missile first appears on sensors, the nation Bigelow’s film depicts has been blown to smithereens.
