Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the mantle of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as an honor and a weight. On the beneficial side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this prism, auteurist critics may feel pressured to make excuses for even their least successful efforts. (The rationale is that a lackluster film by a Renowned Director is still better than the best work of a commercial director.) One drawback is that such accolades can confine a creative to a tight creative box, searching only for material worthy of a Noted Film-maker; another is that the disappointment when a project fails to ignite is even more pronounced. A notable example has made its way to Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if texts from cinephile pals are any indication – seems destined for only one honor this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
To understand why the film has failed to impress, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow established her acclaim with a succession of expansive, limber genre pics: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the enduring Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A sharper insight of her direction of travel came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an intense future-now thriller, influenced by the Rodney King case, which also doubled as a warning tale about the risks of abandoning reality to take cover in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more alert to this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her native country – was pushed into a reactive stance. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty broached America’s recent military engagements in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the period following the Charlottesville events, entered into a heated debate with the country’s extended past of racism.
One can appreciate why a artist following this path might be interested in Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who penned Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the platform would strongly support a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One idea for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
Dynamite is at its strongest early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the brief period in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by mysterious forces is detected by sensors of a US army base in Alaska and reported to the presidential command center, traveling to what everyone learns is its objective: central Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while undertaking an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re set to wondering where this two-hour film can possibly go once the countdown clock reaches zero.
The outcome – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is back to the beginning: the film later moves between the viewpoints of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ military officer, secretary of defence Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the prologue briefly seen or mentioned. From a narrative standpoint, the film fails to progress: it’s a lengthy film with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel again and again, each pass layering on debated technical details while inching everyone nearer the anticipated detonation. Earlier Bigelow films had a strong control on stimulus and response; her best films as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the catalytic moment is also the concluding action; the drama gets interesting at the exact moment the film concludes. The figures are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for different reasons.
While the scenario spins in ever decreasing circles, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve sufficient moments to ponder the deleterious effect streaming budgets has had on the look of U.S. films. Even on the big screen, Dynamite appeared as uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content employing identical backdrops, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist fades away, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that initial segment as possibly one more of this director’s strong female professionals, leaves the story too soon, so again it’s left to a group of serious male figures to try to prevent the world’s end. The energy Bigelow infused into her pulpier breakthrough films is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the artist felt she had to rein in her experimental tendencies, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some offsetting dramatic intensity.
The dread A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a director’s terror of being deemed insufficient; stiffening and virtually solidifying as it goes along, it’s not unexpected the film should have been overtaken by current, reshaping incidents. What this story presumes is that those occupying positions of operational authority would be skilled experts, conscientious to the core and that the largest risk to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from an origin beyond the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their moment, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s latest projects to fall somewhere between afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends two listless hours struggling aimlessly out of touch. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the unauthorized projectile first is detected, the America Bigelow’s film portrays has been blown to smithereens.
Maya is a seasoned travel writer with a passion for uncovering exclusive destinations and sharing practical tips for luxury travelers.
