Bestowed upon a select group, the designation of Noted Film-maker can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the favorable side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this prism, auteurist critics may feel pressured to make excuses for even their weakest efforts. (The reasoning is that a disappointing film by a Renowned Director is still better than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One downside is that such honorifics can restrict a creative to a constrained space, searching only for material suitable for a Noted Film-maker; another is that the frustration when a project fails to ignite is significantly amplified. A prominent test case has just reached Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if texts from cinephile pals are any measure – seems assured of only one honor this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
Examining Bigelow's Career Path
To determine why the film has underwhelmed so, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow earned her laurels with a series of versatile and dynamic movies: biker flick The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the timeless Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A more definite sign of her creative evolution came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an electrifying sci-fi suspense story, shaped by the Rodney King case, which also served as a cautionary fable about the dangers of escaping from the real world to find refuge in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more alert 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 time of national tension, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s long history of racism.
One can appreciate why a director with this background might be drawn towards 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 streamer would strongly support a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (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 missile launched somewhere in the Pacific by unknown parties is detected by sensors of a United States outpost in Alaska and reported to the presidential command center, traveling to what everyone learns is its destination: downtown Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while engaging in an compelling countdown strategy: we’re made to question where this two-hour film can possibly go once the timer reaches zero.
The answer – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is back to the beginning: the film later moves between the angles of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ military officer, secretary of defence Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the prologue glimpsed or heard only in passing. From a narrative standpoint, the film is unable to advance: it’s a extended runtime with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment again and again, every iteration trowelling on contested bureaucratic steps while inching everyone nearer the anticipated detonation. Earlier Bigelow films had a firm hold on stimulus and response; her finest achievements as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the inciting incident is also the concluding action; the drama gets interesting at the very second the film concludes. The figures are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for separate causes.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the plot spins in ever decreasing circles, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve ample time to ponder the negative impact Netflix money has had on the aesthetic of American cinema. Even on the large screen, Dynamite appeared as dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork recalling 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings recycling the same sets, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that initial segment as possibly one more of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, clocks off early, so once more it’s up to a cabal of frowning men to try to stop doomsday. The passion Bigelow infused into her pulpier breakthrough films disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the film-maker felt she had to rein in her risk-taking, but a script this verbose required some balancing visual flair.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The dread A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a filmmaker's fear of being considered inadequate; tensing up and almost petrifying as it progresses, it’s understandable the film should have been overtaken by recent, recontextualising events. What this screenplay presumes is that those occupying positions of operational authority would be qualified professionals, 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 previous Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their time, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s newer films to fall in a gray area of oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends two listless hours clawing futilely out of touch. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the rogue missile first is detected, the United States Bigelow’s film describes has been blown to smithereens.
