Bestowed upon an elite few, the mantle of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the beneficial side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an celebrated director through this prism, film scholars may feel compelled to justify even their least successful efforts. (The logic is that a subpar film by a Noted Film-maker is still superior to the best work of a commercial director.) One disadvantage is that such honorifics can confine a creative to a tight creative box, searching only for material befitting a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the disappointment when a project doesn't spark is even more pronounced. A high-profile instance has recently arrived on Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if texts from cinephile pals are any indication – seems nailed on for only one award this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.
Retracing the Director's Steps
To understand why the film has disappointed many, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow built her reputation with a series of versatile and dynamic movies: biker flick The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the enduring action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. Clearer indication of her direction of travel came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an intense near-future drama, influenced by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also served as a moral story about the risks of abandoning reality to seek shelter in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her former husband and collaborator 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 heated debate with the country’s long history of racism.
You can understand why a film-maker on this trajectory might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who penned Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the streamer would vigorously back a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One idea for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, depicting in near real-time the brief period in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific by unknown parties is spotted on the radars of a US army base in Alaska and flagged to the executive briefing area, heading for what everyone learns is its objective: central Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while engaging in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re left pondering where this two-hour film can possibly proceed once the timer expires.
The outcome – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is a return to the start: the film then shifts between the perspectives of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ military officer, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene glimpsed or heard only in passing. Structurally, the film is unable to advance: it’s a two-hour movie with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel multiple times, every iteration trowelling on moot procedural points while edging everybody closer the feared explosion. Previous Bigelow films had a tight grip on action and consequence; 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 narrative captivates at the precise instant the film fades to black. The figures are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.
Visual and Thematic Shortcomings
While the plot revolves in shrinking loops, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve plenty of opportunity to reflect on the negative impact streaming budgets has had on the look of Hollywood productions. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite appeared as flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings reusing familiar locations, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that opening reel as possibly one more of this director’s tough-minded working women, leaves the story too soon, so yet again it’s left to a cabal of frowning men to try to avert global catastrophe. The verve Bigelow contributed to her pulpier breakthrough films disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the director felt she had to curb her experimental tendencies, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some offsetting dramatic intensity.
Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts
The dread A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t global eradication, but a director’s terror of being deemed insufficient; stiffening and practically fossilising as it unfolds, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been eclipsed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this story takes for granted is that those in charge of critical decisions would be qualified professionals, fundamentally diligent and that the biggest threat to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like intensely involved commentaries on their moment, Dynamite – the first of this director’s latest projects to fall in a gray area of neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends two listless hours struggling aimlessly outdated. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the stray rocket first is detected, the nation Bigelow’s film portrays has been blown to smithereens.
