Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the designation of Noted Film-maker can serve as an honor and a weight. On the positive side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this lens, film scholars may feel compelled to make excuses for even their poorest efforts. (The rationale is that a disappointing film by a Noted Film-maker is still more valuable than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One downside is that such titles can confine a creative to a constrained space, pursuing exclusively material suitable for a Noted Film-maker; another is that the dismay when a project falls flat is even more pronounced. A prominent instance has recently arrived on Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if messages from film buff friends are any measure – seems nailed on for only one award this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.
Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey
To understand why the film has failed to impress, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow established her acclaim with a run of broad, agile genre films: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the timeless action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A more definite sign of her creative evolution came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an gripping future-now thriller, shaped by the Rodney King incident, which also doubled as a warning tale about the perils of escaping from the real world to find refuge in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet post-2001, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her homeland – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty broached America’s recent military engagements in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the period following the Charlottesville events, entered into a contentious dialogue with the country’s extended past of racism.
It's easy to see why a artist following this path might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who wrote Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the service would vigorously back a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One idea for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses
Dynamite is at its most effective early on, depicting in near real-time the brief period in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by mysterious forces is detected by sensors of a United States outpost in Alaska and reported to the White House situation room, heading for what everyone learns is its objective: central Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while undertaking an compelling countdown strategy: we’re left pondering where this full-length production can possibly head once the chronometer hits zero.
The answer – and this is where the letdowns start – is a return to the start: the film later moves between the perspectives of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the opening scene briefly seen or mentioned. From a narrative standpoint, the film is unable to advance: it’s a lengthy film with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section again and again, every iteration layering on contested bureaucratic steps while edging everybody closer the feared explosion. Earlier Bigelow films had a tight grip on cause-and-effect; her most successful works as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the inciting incident is also the endgame; the story becomes engaging at the very second the film fades to black. The figures are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for separate causes.
Stylistic and Conceptual Issues
While the situation cycles in diminishing returns, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve plenty of opportunity to reflect on the deleterious effect platform financing has had on the visual style of American cinema. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite appeared as flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings reusing familiar locations, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker fades away, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that initial segment as perhaps an additional of this director’s strong female professionals, exits prematurely, so yet again it’s the responsibility of a cabal of frowning men to try to prevent the world’s end. The passion Bigelow brought to her grittier initial successes is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the artist felt she had to restrain her experimental tendencies, but a script this talky required some balancing visual flair.
The Core Fear and Final Analysis
The dread A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a artist's anxiety of being thought unworthy; becoming rigid and practically fossilising as it unfolds, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been overtaken by recent, recontextualising events. What this screenplay takes for granted is that those in charge of critical decisions would be skilled experts, fundamentally diligent 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 deeply committed examinations on their time, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s newer films to fall somewhere between oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime scrabbling around hopelessly behind the curve. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the rogue missile first appears on sensors, the America Bigelow’s film depicts has been shattered completely.
