Bestowed upon an elite few, the designation of Noted Film-maker can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the favorable side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this prism, cinema analysts may feel obliged to make excuses for even their poorest efforts. (The logic is that a subpar film by a Renowned Director is still superior to the best work of a jobbing hack.) One downside is that such accolades can confine a creative to a very narrow courtyard, searching only for material suitable for a Esteemed Director; another is that the disappointment when a project doesn't spark is all the greater. A high-profile instance has just reached Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed 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 Most Notable Misfire.
Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey
To ascertain the reasons the film has failed to impress, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow built her reputation with a series of broad, agile genre films: biker flick The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the timeless Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. Clearer indication of her direction of travel came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an intense near-future drama, informed by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also doubled as a warning tale about the risks of rejecting actuality to take cover in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, now preparing the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her homeland – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed America’s recent military engagements in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the summer of Charlottesville, entered into a contentious dialogue with the country’s extended past of racism.
It's easy to see why a film-maker on this trajectory might be interested in Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who wrote Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the service would strongly support a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One idea for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)
The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses
Dynamite is at its strongest early on, describing in something like real time the short interval in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by mysterious forces is spotted on the radars of a US army base in Alaska and flagged to the executive briefing area, traveling to what everyone learns is its target: central Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while participating in an compelling countdown strategy: we’re made to question where this full-length production can possibly go once the timer expires.
The outcome – and this is where the letdowns start – is a revisit of the opening: the film subsequently shuffles between the perspectives of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ military officer, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene glimpsed or heard only in passing. Structurally, the film is unable to advance: it’s a lengthy film with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel again and again, each pass layering on moot procedural points while moving all parties toward the dreaded big bang. Earlier Bigelow films had a strong control on cause-and-effect; her finest achievements as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the triggering event is also the endgame; the narrative captivates at the very second the film fades to black. The characters are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for different reasons.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the situation spins in ever decreasing circles, like a bleak repetitive cycle, we’ve sufficient moments to consider the deleterious effect Netflix money has had on the aesthetic of Hollywood productions. Even on the large screen, Dynamite appeared as flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content reusing familiar locations, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that beginning part as perhaps an additional of this director’s tough-minded working women, clocks off early, so yet again it’s up to a group of serious male figures to try to prevent the world’s end. The verve Bigelow contributed to her more genre-oriented early hits vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the film-maker felt she had to curb her bold choices, but a script this verbose required some offsetting dramatic intensity.
The Core Fear and Final Analysis
The fear A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a filmmaker's fear of being thought unworthy; stiffening and practically fossilising as it progresses, it’s not unexpected the film should have been eclipsed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this story presumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be trained specialists, deeply responsible and that the biggest threat to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from an origin beyond the White House. Where previous Bigelow films felt like intensely involved commentaries on their era, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s newer films to fall in a gray area of afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours clawing futilely outdated. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the stray rocket first is detected, the United States Bigelow’s film portrays has been destroyed utterly.
