Bestowed upon an elite few, the mantle of Esteemed Director can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the positive side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an celebrated director through this prism, film scholars may feel compelled to make excuses for even their least successful efforts. (The logic is that a subpar film by a Renowned Director is still superior to the best work of a routine filmmaker.) One disadvantage is that such titles can limit a creative to a very narrow courtyard, pursuing exclusively material befitting a Noted Film-maker; another is that the disappointment when a project doesn't spark is even more pronounced. A prominent example has recently arrived on Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if feedback from movie enthusiasts are any indication – seems nailed on for only one award this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.
Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey
To understand why the film has disappointed many, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow built her reputation with a succession of broad, agile genre films: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, police drama 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 intense near-future drama, influenced by the Rodney King incident, which also served as a cautionary fable about the perils of escaping from the real world to take cover in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet post-2001, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her native country – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed America’s then-recent misadventures in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the period following the Charlottesville events, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s long history of racism.
You can understand why a film-maker on this trajectory might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who scripted Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the streamer would vigorously back a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One pitch for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)
The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses
Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, depicting in near real-time the brief period in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific region by unknown parties is picked up on screens of a American military installation in Alaska and alerted to the White House situation room, en route towards what everyone learns is its objective: central Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while participating in an compelling countdown strategy: we’re left pondering where this full-length production can possibly proceed once the countdown clock reaches zero.
The outcome – and this is where the letdowns start – is a return to the start: the film then shifts between the viewpoints of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief 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 revisit that first reel multiple times, every iteration adding on debated technical details while edging everybody closer the dreaded big bang. Prior Bigelow films had a tight grip on stimulus and response; her finest achievements 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 narrative captivates at the precise instant the film ends. The figures are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for separate causes.
Visual and Thematic Shortcomings
While the plot revolves in shrinking loops, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve ample time to ponder the harmful influence platform financing has had on the look of U.S. films. Even on the large screen, Dynamite appeared as flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing recalling 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content reusing familiar locations, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that initial segment as possibly one more of this director’s strong female professionals, leaves the story too soon, so once more it’s the responsibility of a group of serious male figures to try to prevent the world’s end. The energy Bigelow contributed to her more genre-oriented early hits disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the film-maker felt she had to restrain her experimental tendencies, but a script this verbose required some balancing visual flair.
Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts
The dread A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t global eradication, but a director’s terror of being considered inadequate; stiffening and practically fossilising as it progresses, it’s not unexpected the film should have been overtaken by recent, recontextualising events. What this story presumes is that those holding roles of command would be qualified professionals, deeply responsible and that the biggest threat to Chicago in late 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their era, Dynamite – the first of this director’s newer films to fall in a gray area of oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours scrabbling around hopelessly behind the curve. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the unauthorized projectile first appears on sensors, the America Bigelow’s film depicts has been destroyed utterly.
