Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the mantle of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the favorable side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this perspective, cinema analysts may feel pressured to justify even their least successful efforts. (The logic is that a disappointing film by a Renowned Director is still better than the best work of a routine filmmaker.) One downside is that such honorifics can restrict 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 significantly amplified. A prominent example has recently arrived on Netflix in the film by Kathryn 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.
Examining Bigelow's Career Path
To ascertain the reasons the film has underwhelmed so, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow established her acclaim with a succession of broad, agile genre films: biker flick The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the timeless Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A more definite sign of her artistic path came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an intense near-future drama, informed by the Rodney King case, which also functioned as a warning tale about the risks of rejecting actuality to take cover in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more alert to this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 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 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 deep-seated legacy of racism.
You can understand why a director with this background might be interested in Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who penned Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the service would strongly support a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One idea for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
High Points and Low Points
Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, describing in something like real time the 19 minutes in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific region by unidentified actors is detected by sensors of a US army base in Alaska and reported to the presidential command center, traveling to what everyone learns is its objective: the heart of Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while engaging in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re made to question where this two-hour film can possibly go once the chronometer hits zero.
The answer – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is back to the beginning: the film then shifts between the viewpoints of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ general, secretary of defence Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the opening scene briefly seen or mentioned. From a narrative standpoint, the film fails to progress: it’s a lengthy film with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section again and again, each pass adding on contested bureaucratic steps while edging everybody closer the feared explosion. Previous Bigelow films had a tight grip on action and consequence; her finest achievements as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the catalytic moment is also the endgame; the drama gets interesting at the very second the film ends. The characters are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for different reasons.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the scenario revolves in shrinking loops, like a bleak repetitive cycle, we’ve sufficient moments to consider the deleterious effect Netflix money has had on the aesthetic of American cinema. Even on the large screen, Dynamite seemed uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming evoking 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content recycling the same sets, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that opening reel as possibly one more of this director’s tough-minded working women, exits prematurely, so once more it’s the responsibility of a collection of stern males to try to stop doomsday. The verve Bigelow contributed to her pulpier breakthrough films vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the artist felt she had to restrain her bold choices, but a script this verbose required some compensatory pyrotechnics.
Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts
The dread A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t global eradication, but a filmmaker's fear of being considered inadequate; becoming rigid and virtually solidifying as it unfolds, it’s understandable the film should have been overtaken by recent, recontextualising events. What this story takes for granted is that those in charge of critical decisions would be trained specialists, conscientious to the core and that the greatest danger to Chicago in the latter part of 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their era, Dynamite – the first of this director’s recent works to fall somewhere between afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours scrabbling around hopelessly outdated. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the stray rocket first is detected, the nation Bigelow’s film depicts has been shattered completely.
