Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the designation of Noted Film-maker can serve as an honor and a weight. On the beneficial side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this prism, cinema analysts may feel obliged to make excuses for even their weakest efforts. (The reasoning is that a disappointing film by a Noted Film-maker is still more valuable than the best work of a routine filmmaker.) One drawback is that such honorifics can limit a creative to a constrained space, pursuing exclusively material worthy of a Esteemed Director; another is that the disappointment when a project doesn't spark is even more pronounced. A notable example has made its way to Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if messages from film buff friends are any indication – seems assured of only one recognition this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.
Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey
To ascertain the reasons the film has underwhelmed so, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow built her reputation with a succession of expansive, limber genre pics: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the timeless action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A sharper insight of her creative evolution came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an gripping sci-fi suspense story, informed by the Rodney King case, which also functioned as a moral story about the perils of rejecting actuality to find refuge in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, now preparing the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her homeland – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled 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 artist following this path might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who penned Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the platform would strongly support a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One concept for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its strongest early on, describing in something like real time the brief period in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific by unidentified actors is detected by sensors of a US army base in Alaska and alerted to the executive briefing area, traveling to what everyone learns is its target: the heart of Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while participating in an intriguing temporal brinkmanship: we’re left pondering where this full-length production can possibly head once the chronometer reaches 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 higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ general, secretary of defence Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the introduction briefly seen or mentioned. In terms of construction, the film fails to progress: it’s a lengthy film with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section multiple times, every iteration trowelling on contested bureaucratic steps while edging everybody closer the dreaded big bang. Earlier Bigelow films had a tight grip on stimulus and response; her best films as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the inciting incident is also the endgame; the story becomes engaging at the precise instant the film fades to black. The figures are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the situation spins in ever decreasing circles, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve sufficient moments to consider the harmful influence platform financing has had on the visual style of U.S. films. Even on the big screen, Dynamite struck the eye as flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing recalling 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings reusing familiar locations, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that initial segment as potentially another of this director’s tough-minded working women, leaves the story too soon, so yet again it’s up to a cabal of frowning men to try to avert global catastrophe. The energy Bigelow brought to her pulpier breakthrough films disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the film-maker felt she had to rein in her risk-taking, but a script this verbose required some compensatory pyrotechnics.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The fear A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t global eradication, but a filmmaker's fear of being considered inadequate; becoming rigid and almost petrifying as it goes along, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been overtaken by current, reshaping incidents. What this script assumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be trained specialists, conscientious to the core and that the greatest danger to Chicago in late 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their moment, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s latest projects to fall somewhere between oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours clawing futilely behind the curve. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the unauthorized projectile first registers on a radar, the America Bigelow’s film depicts has been shattered completely.
