Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the designation of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the beneficial side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this lens, auteurist critics may feel compelled to defend even their weakest efforts. (The reasoning is that a disappointing film by a Noted Film-maker is still better than the best work of a commercial director.) One disadvantage is that such titles can limit a creative to a tight creative box, seeking out material suitable for a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the frustration when a project falls flat is even more pronounced. A notable test case has recently arrived on Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if messages from film buff friends are any guide – seems assured of only one honor this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
Retracing the Director's Steps
To ascertain the reasons the film has underwhelmed so, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow established her acclaim with a run of expansive, limber genre pics: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the enduring Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A sharper insight of her creative evolution came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an gripping sci-fi suspense story, informed by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also served as a cautionary fable about the perils of rejecting actuality to seek shelter in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her the United States – was pushed into a reactive stance. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled America’s contemporary conflicts 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.
It's easy to see why a film-maker on this trajectory might be interested in Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who wrote Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the platform would enthusiastically stump for a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One concept for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
High Points and Low Points
Dynamite is at its strongest early on, depicting in near real-time the brief period in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific by unidentified actors is detected by sensors of a United States outpost in Alaska and reported to the White House situation room, traveling to what everyone learns is its destination: downtown Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while engaging in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re left pondering where this two-hour film can possibly go once the countdown clock reaches zero.
The outcome – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is a return to the start: the film subsequently shuffles between the viewpoints of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the introduction only partially revealed. In terms of construction, the film is unable to advance: it’s a two-hour movie with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section again and again, each repetition layering on moot procedural points while edging everybody closer the feared explosion. Previous Bigelow films had a strong control on stimulus and response; her finest achievements as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the inciting incident is also the final play; the drama gets interesting at the precise instant the film ends. The personas are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.
Stylistic and Conceptual Issues
While the scenario spins in ever decreasing circles, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve ample time to consider the harmful influence Netflix money has had on the look of American cinema. Even on the big screen, Dynamite seemed flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork recalling 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content reusing familiar locations, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist disappears, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that beginning part as potentially another of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, clocks off early, so once more it’s up to a group of serious male figures to try to stop doomsday. The passion Bigelow contributed to her grittier initial successes vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the film-maker felt she had to restrain her bold choices, but a script this talky required some balancing visual flair.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The fear A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a artist's anxiety of being deemed insufficient; stiffening and virtually solidifying as it unfolds, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been overtaken by current, reshaping incidents. What this screenplay takes for granted is that those occupying positions of operational authority would be qualified professionals, deeply responsible and that the greatest danger to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their era, Dynamite – the first of this director’s recent works to fall somewhere between oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime scrabbling around hopelessly out of touch. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the unauthorized projectile first is detected, the United States Bigelow’s film describes has been destroyed utterly.
