Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the mantle of Acclaimed Auteur 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 ennobled director through this prism, auteurist critics may feel pressured to defend even their weakest efforts. (The rationale is that a lackluster film by a Noted Film-maker is still superior to the best work of a routine filmmaker.) One drawback is that such titles can restrict a creative to a very narrow courtyard, searching only for material befitting a Noted Film-maker; another is that the dismay when a project fails to ignite is even more pronounced. A notable test case 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 guide – seems destined for only one award this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.
Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey
To understand why the film has failed to impress, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow established her acclaim with a succession of versatile and dynamic movies: biker flick The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the timeless action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. Clearer indication of her creative evolution came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an electrifying sci-fi suspense story, shaped by the Rodney King case, which also served as a moral story about the risks of escaping from the real world to take cover in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet post-2001, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her the United States – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty broached America’s then-recent misadventures in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the summer of Charlottesville, entered into a heated debate with the country’s extended past of racism.
It's easy to see why a film-maker on this trajectory might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who penned Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the service would strongly support a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One idea for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)
The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses
Dynamite is at its strongest early on, depicting in near real-time the short interval in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by mysterious forces is detected by sensors of a American military installation in Alaska and flagged to the White House situation room, en route towards what everyone learns is its destination: the heart of Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim briskly accelerate the stakes while engaging in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re made to question where this full-length production can possibly go once the countdown clock reaches zero.
The response – and this is where the letdowns start – is a return to the start: the film then shifts between the perspectives of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ general, secretary of defence Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the introduction briefly seen or mentioned. From a narrative standpoint, the film can’t develop: it’s a two-hour movie with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section again and again, every iteration adding on debated technical details while moving all parties toward the dreaded big bang. Previous Bigelow films had a tight grip on action and consequence; her finest achievements as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the inciting incident is also the endgame; the drama gets interesting at the very second the film fades to black. The figures are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for different reasons.
Stylistic and Conceptual Issues
While the scenario revolves in shrinking loops, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve sufficient moments to consider the deleterious effect platform financing has had on the aesthetic of U.S. films. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite struck the eye as flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork evoking 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases employing identical backdrops, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that beginning part as possibly one more of this director’s tough-minded working women, clocks off early, so yet again it’s the responsibility of a cabal of frowning men to try to prevent the world’s end. The verve Bigelow contributed to her pulpier breakthrough films is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the film-maker felt she had to restrain her bold choices, but a script this talky required some offsetting dramatic intensity.
The Core Fear and Final Analysis
The dread A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t global eradication, but a director’s terror of being thought unworthy; becoming rigid and practically fossilising as it goes along, it’s not unexpected the film should have been overtaken by current, reshaping incidents. What this screenplay presumes is that those holding roles of command would be trained specialists, fundamentally diligent and that the largest risk to Chicago in late 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like intensely involved commentaries on their era, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s latest projects to fall somewhere between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime clawing futilely behind the curve. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the rogue missile first is detected, the United States Bigelow’s film depicts has been shattered completely.
