Bestowed upon a select group, the title of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as an honor and a weight. 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 compelled to defend even their poorest efforts. (The logic is that a lackluster film by a Renowned Director is still better than the best work of a commercial director.) One downside is that such accolades can restrict a creative to a very narrow courtyard, seeking out material befitting a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the dismay when a project fails to ignite is significantly amplified. A notable instance has just reached Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if texts from cinephile pals are any measure – seems destined for only one honor this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.
Retracing the Director's Steps
To understand why the film has underwhelmed so, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow built her reputation with a series of expansive, limber genre pics: biker flick The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the timeless Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. Clearer indication of her creative evolution came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an gripping sci-fi suspense story, influenced by the Rodney King case, which also served as a cautionary fable about the risks of abandoning reality to seek shelter in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her native country – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled America’s contemporary conflicts in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the summer of Charlottesville, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s deep-seated legacy of racism.
One can appreciate why a director with this background might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who penned Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the platform would vigorously back a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One idea for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
High Points and Low Points
Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the 19 minutes in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific by mysterious forces is spotted on the radars of a United States outpost in Alaska and flagged to the presidential command center, en route towards what everyone learns is its objective: the heart of Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while undertaking an compelling countdown strategy: we’re set to wondering where this two-hour film can possibly head once the chronometer hits zero.
The outcome – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is a revisit of the opening: the film then shifts between the angles of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ general, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the prologue briefly seen or mentioned. Structurally, the film is unable to advance: it’s a two-hour movie with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment repeatedly, each repetition adding on debated technical details while inching everyone nearer the anticipated detonation. Prior Bigelow films had a tight grip on cause-and-effect; her best films as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the catalytic moment is also the concluding action; the story becomes engaging at the exact moment the film concludes. The personas are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.
Stylistic and Conceptual Issues
While the situation cycles in diminishing returns, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve plenty of opportunity to consider the negative impact platform financing has had on the aesthetic of U.S. films. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite seemed uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings employing identical backdrops, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist fades away, 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, clocks off early, so once more it’s left to a group of serious male figures to try to stop doomsday. The energy Bigelow contributed to her pulpier breakthrough films disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the film-maker felt she had to curb her bold choices, but a script this verbose required some offsetting dramatic intensity.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The dread A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a director’s terror of being considered inadequate; stiffening and almost petrifying as it goes along, it’s not unexpected the film should have been eclipsed by recent, recontextualising events. What this story presumes is that those holding roles of command would be qualified professionals, deeply responsible and that the largest risk to Chicago in the end of 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 initial of this director’s recent works to fall in the space between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends two listless hours clawing futilely behind the curve. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the stray rocket first appears on sensors, the nation Bigelow’s film depicts has been destroyed utterly.
