Bestowed upon a select group, the mantle of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the favorable side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this perspective, film scholars may feel pressured to defend even their least successful efforts. (The reasoning is that a disappointing film by a Noted Film-maker is still better than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One disadvantage is that such honorifics can limit a creative to a constrained space, seeking out material befitting a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the dismay when a project doesn't spark is even more pronounced. A notable test case has made its way to Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if feedback from movie enthusiasts are any indication – seems assured of only one honor this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey
To determine why the film has failed to impress, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow earned her laurels with a succession of expansive, limber genre pics: biker flick The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the classic Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A more definite sign of her direction of travel came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an gripping sci-fi suspense story, informed by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also doubled as a warning tale about the perils of rejecting actuality to find refuge in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more alert to this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her native country – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed America’s recent military engagements 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.
One can appreciate why a film-maker on this trajectory might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who scripted Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the streamer would strongly support a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One idea for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
High Points and Low Points
Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, describing in something like real time the 19 minutes in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific region by unknown parties is spotted on the radars of a US army base in Alaska and alerted to the presidential command center, en route towards what everyone learns is its objective: central 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 timer hits zero.
The response – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is back to the beginning: the film then shifts between the perspectives of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the introduction only partially revealed. In terms of construction, the film can’t develop: it’s a extended runtime with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment repeatedly, each pass layering on contested bureaucratic steps while moving all parties toward the anticipated detonation. Previous Bigelow films had a tight grip on action and consequence; her best films as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the triggering event is also the endgame; the story becomes engaging at the very second the film concludes. The personas are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for separate causes.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the situation cycles in diminishing returns, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve sufficient moments to consider the harmful influence Netflix money has had on the visual style of American cinema. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite seemed flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming recalling 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings reusing familiar locations, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director disappears, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that opening reel as potentially another of this director’s strong female professionals, exits prematurely, so once more it’s the responsibility of a group of serious male figures to try to avert global catastrophe. The passion Bigelow contributed to her grittier initial successes disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the director felt she had to rein in her experimental tendencies, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some offsetting dramatic intensity.
Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts
The fear A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a filmmaker's fear of being thought unworthy; tensing up and almost petrifying as it progresses, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been surpassed by recent, recontextualising events. What this screenplay presumes is that those holding roles of command would be qualified professionals, conscientious to the core and that the biggest threat to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their era, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s newer films to fall in a gray area of oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends two listless hours clawing futilely behind the curve. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the unauthorized projectile first is detected, the nation Bigelow’s film depicts has been destroyed utterly.
