Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the designation of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the positive side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this prism, film scholars may feel pressured to defend even their least successful 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 befitting a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the dismay when a project fails to ignite is all the greater. A prominent test case has just reached Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if feedback from movie enthusiasts are any indication – seems destined for only one honor this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey
To ascertain the reasons the film has underwhelmed so, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow built her reputation with a series of versatile and dynamic movies: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the classic action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A more definite sign of her artistic path came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an electrifying near-future drama, informed by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also served as a cautionary fable about the dangers of abandoning reality to take cover in the simulated environment. (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 standing increasing, Bigelow – like her native country – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled America’s contemporary conflicts in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s long history of racism.
One can appreciate why a film-maker on this trajectory might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who wrote Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the streamer would vigorously back a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One concept for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
High Points and Low Points
Dynamite is at its most effective early on, depicting in near real-time the short interval in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by unidentified actors is detected by sensors of a American military installation in Alaska and reported to the executive briefing area, heading for what everyone learns is its objective: the heart of Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while engaging in an intriguing temporal brinkmanship: we’re left pondering where this two-hour film can possibly head once the timer reaches zero.
The response – and this is where the letdowns start – is a return to the start: the film subsequently shuffles between the angles of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ military officer, secretary of defence Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the prologue briefly seen or mentioned. From a narrative standpoint, the film is unable to advance: it’s a lengthy film with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel repeatedly, every iteration layering on debated technical details while edging everybody closer the anticipated detonation. Prior Bigelow films had a tight grip on stimulus and response; her finest achievements as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the triggering event is also the endgame; the story becomes engaging at the very second the film fades to black. The characters are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.
Stylistic and Conceptual Issues
While the situation spins in ever decreasing circles, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve sufficient moments to ponder the harmful influence streaming budgets has had on the look of American cinema. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite appeared as uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings employing identical backdrops, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that opening reel as possibly one more of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, clocks off early, so again it’s the responsibility of a cabal of frowning men to try to avert global catastrophe. The energy Bigelow contributed to her more genre-oriented early hits is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the film-maker felt she had to rein in her bold choices, but a script this talky required some balancing visual flair.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The fear A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a filmmaker's fear of being thought unworthy; tensing up and almost petrifying as it unfolds, it’s understandable 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, 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 intensely involved commentaries on their era, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s latest projects to fall in the space between oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends two listless hours scrabbling around hopelessly behind the curve. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the rogue missile first registers on a radar, the America Bigelow’s film portrays has been shattered completely.
