Bestowed upon an elite few, the designation of Esteemed Director can serve as an honor and a weight. On the beneficial side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this perspective, auteurist critics may feel obliged to justify even their weakest efforts. (The logic is that a lackluster film by a Noted Film-maker is still more valuable than the best work of a commercial director.) One disadvantage is that such accolades can limit a creative to a tight creative box, seeking out material suitable for a Esteemed Director; another is that the dismay when a project doesn't spark is even more pronounced. A prominent test case has recently arrived on Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if messages from film buff friends are any indication – seems destined for only one honor this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.
Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey
To understand why the film has disappointed many, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow earned her laurels with a succession of expansive, limber genre pics: biker flick The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, cop thriller 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 intense near-future drama, shaped by the Rodney King incident, which also functioned as a warning tale about the perils of abandoning reality to take cover in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, now preparing the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her homeland – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty broached America’s then-recent misadventures in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s deep-seated legacy of racism.
You can understand why a director with this background might be interested in Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who scripted Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the platform would strongly support a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One pitch for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the 19 minutes in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by unknown parties is detected by sensors of a United States outpost in Alaska and alerted to the White House situation room, heading for what everyone learns is its objective: central Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while participating in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re left pondering where this full-length production can possibly head once the chronometer hits zero.
The answer – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is back to the beginning: the film then shifts between the viewpoints of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ general, secretary of defence Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the opening scene glimpsed or heard only in passing. In terms of construction, the film can’t develop: it’s a extended runtime with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section multiple times, each pass layering on moot procedural points while inching everyone nearer the feared explosion. Earlier Bigelow films had a firm hold on cause-and-effect; her finest achievements as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the triggering event is also the final play; the narrative captivates at the precise instant the film ends. The characters are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for different reasons.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the plot spins in ever decreasing circles, like a bleak repetitive cycle, we’ve ample time to reflect on the negative impact platform financing has had on the visual style of U.S. films. Even on the big screen, Dynamite seemed dully conventional, 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 disappears, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that initial segment as possibly one more of this director’s strong female professionals, exits prematurely, so again it’s the responsibility of a group of serious male figures to try to prevent the world’s end. The energy Bigelow contributed to her grittier initial successes vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the director felt she had to restrain her experimental tendencies, but a script this verbose required some offsetting dramatic intensity.
The Core Fear and Final Analysis
The dread A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a artist's anxiety of being thought unworthy; stiffening and almost petrifying as it goes along, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been surpassed by current, reshaping incidents. What this story assumes is that those holding roles of command would be trained specialists, deeply responsible and that the largest risk to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where previous Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their era, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s recent works to fall in a gray area of 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 unauthorized projectile first is detected, the United States Bigelow’s film portrays has been blown to smithereens.
