Bestowed upon a select group, the mantle of Noted Film-maker can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the positive side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an celebrated director through this lens, cinema analysts may feel obliged to justify even their weakest efforts. (The reasoning is that a disappointing film by a Prestigious Auteur is still superior to the best work of a commercial director.) One downside is that such accolades can limit a creative to a constrained space, searching only for material suitable for a Esteemed Director; another is that the disappointment when a project falls flat is all the greater. A notable instance has just reached Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if texts from cinephile pals are any indication – seems destined for only one recognition this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.
Retracing the Director's Steps
To understand why the film has disappointed many, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow built her reputation with a series of broad, agile genre films: biker flick The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the classic Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A more definite sign of her artistic path came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an electrifying near-future drama, informed by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also served as a moral story about the dangers of escaping from the real world to seek shelter in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her the United States – was pushed into a reactive stance. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed America’s recent military engagements in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the period following the Charlottesville events, entered into a heated debate with the country’s long history 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 previous news executive who wrote Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the service would vigorously back a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One idea for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its most effective early on, describing in something like real time the brief period in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific region by unidentified actors 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 destination: downtown Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while engaging in an intriguing temporal brinkmanship: we’re made to question where this feature-length movie can possibly proceed once the chronometer reaches zero.
The outcome – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is back to the beginning: the film subsequently shuffles between the viewpoints of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ general, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene glimpsed or heard only in passing. In terms of construction, the film is unable to advance: it’s a lengthy film with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment repeatedly, each repetition trowelling on debated technical details while moving all parties toward the dreaded big bang. Earlier Bigelow films had a strong control on cause-and-effect; her best films as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the inciting incident is also the endgame; the drama gets interesting at the precise instant the film concludes. The personas are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the scenario spins in ever decreasing circles, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve plenty of opportunity to ponder the negative impact platform financing has had on the visual style of American cinema. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite struck the eye as uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content recycling the same sets, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker disappears, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that initial segment as potentially another of this director’s strong female professionals, exits prematurely, so once more it’s up to a group of serious male figures to try to stop doomsday. The energy Bigelow infused into her grittier initial successes vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the director felt she had to restrain her experimental tendencies, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some balancing visual flair.
Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts
The dread A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t global eradication, but a filmmaker's fear of being deemed insufficient; tensing up and practically fossilising as it progresses, it’s not unexpected the film should have been eclipsed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this script presumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be trained specialists, fundamentally diligent and that the greatest danger to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from an origin beyond the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their moment, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s recent works to fall somewhere between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours clawing futilely outdated. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the rogue missile first registers on a radar, the United States Bigelow’s film portrays has been blown to smithereens.
