Bestowed upon an elite few, the mantle of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the positive side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this perspective, auteurist critics may feel compelled to defend even their weakest efforts. (The rationale is that a disappointing film by a Prestigious Auteur is still better than the best work of a commercial director.) One downside is that such honorifics can restrict a creative to a very narrow courtyard, seeking out material worthy of a Esteemed Director; another is that the dismay when a project doesn't spark is all the greater. A notable example has recently arrived on Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if feedback from movie enthusiasts are any guide – seems nailed on for only one honor this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
Examining Bigelow's Career Path
To determine why the film has disappointed many, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow established her acclaim with a series of versatile and dynamic movies: biker flick The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the timeless Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A sharper insight of her artistic path came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an electrifying near-future drama, influenced by the Rodney King incident, which also served as a cautionary fable about the dangers of rejecting actuality to find refuge in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more alert to this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet post-2001, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her homeland – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled America’s recent military engagements in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, entered into a contentious dialogue 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 – written by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who scripted Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the service would enthusiastically stump for a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One idea for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)
High Points and Low Points
Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the brief period in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific region by unidentified actors is detected by sensors of a American military installation in Alaska and alerted to the presidential command center, heading for what everyone learns is its destination: central Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim briskly accelerate the stakes while participating in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re made to question where this feature-length movie can possibly go once the chronometer hits zero.
The response – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is back to the beginning: the film then shifts between the angles of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ general, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the introduction only partially revealed. In terms of construction, the film is unable to advance: it’s a lengthy film with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section again and again, each repetition layering on debated technical details while edging everybody closer the dreaded big bang. Earlier Bigelow films had a strong control on action and consequence; her best films as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the triggering event is also the final play; the story becomes engaging at the precise instant the film concludes. The personas 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 bleak repetitive cycle, we’ve sufficient moments to consider the deleterious effect streaming budgets has had on the visual style of American cinema. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite seemed dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork recalling 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content reusing familiar locations, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker disappears, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that opening reel as possibly one more of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, leaves the story too soon, so again it’s left to a collection of stern males to try to stop doomsday. The passion Bigelow infused into her more genre-oriented early hits vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the artist felt she had to restrain her experimental tendencies, but a script this verbose required some compensatory pyrotechnics.
Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts
The dread A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a artist's anxiety of being thought unworthy; becoming rigid and almost petrifying as it progresses, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been overtaken by contemporary, reframing developments. What this screenplay takes for granted is that those in charge of critical decisions would be trained specialists, fundamentally diligent and that the biggest threat to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their era, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s newer films to fall in a gray area of oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime clawing futilely outdated. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the stray rocket first is detected, the America Bigelow’s film describes has been destroyed utterly.
