Bestowed upon an elite few, the designation 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, cinema analysts may feel compelled to defend even their weakest efforts. (The logic is that a disappointing film by a Renowned Director is still superior to the best work of a commercial director.) One disadvantage is that such honorifics can limit a creative to a constrained space, searching only for material suitable for a Esteemed Director; another is that the dismay when a project falls flat is even more pronounced. A high-profile instance has just reached Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if texts from cinephile pals are any guide – seems assured of only one recognition this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.
Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey
To understand why the film has disappointed many, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow established her acclaim with a series of broad, agile genre films: 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 direction of travel came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an electrifying sci-fi suspense story, informed by the Rodney King incident, which also doubled as a moral story about the dangers of escaping from the real world to take cover in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more alert to this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her homeland – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty broached America’s contemporary conflicts in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the period following the Charlottesville events, entered into a heated debate with the country’s deep-seated legacy of racism.
One can appreciate why a artist following this path might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who scripted Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the platform would enthusiastically stump for a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One pitch for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)
High Points and Low Points
Dynamite is at its most effective early on, depicting in near real-time the 19 minutes in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific region by mysterious forces is spotted on the radars of a American military installation in Alaska and alerted to the presidential command center, en route towards what everyone learns is its destination: 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 proceed once the timer hits zero.
The response – and this is where the letdowns start – is a return to the start: the film later moves between the angles of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene only partially revealed. From a narrative standpoint, the film fails to progress: it’s a extended runtime with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section again and again, each repetition trowelling on moot procedural points while edging everybody closer the feared explosion. Prior Bigelow films had a strong control 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 inciting incident is also the endgame; the drama gets interesting at the exact moment the film fades to black. The characters are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for separate causes.
Visual and Thematic Shortcomings
While the plot spins in ever decreasing circles, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve sufficient moments to ponder the negative impact streaming budgets has had on the look of American cinema. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite struck the eye as uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork recalling 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings reusing familiar locations, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director fades away, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that initial segment as potentially another of this director’s tough-minded working women, clocks off early, so yet again it’s the responsibility of a cabal of frowning men to try to prevent the world’s end. The passion Bigelow infused into her more genre-oriented early hits vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the film-maker felt she had to curb her risk-taking, but a script this talky required some balancing visual flair.
Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts
The fear A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a director’s terror of being considered inadequate; becoming rigid and virtually solidifying as it goes along, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been eclipsed by current, reshaping incidents. What this script assumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be skilled experts, deeply responsible and that the greatest danger to Chicago in late 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like intensely involved commentaries on their time, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s recent works to fall in the space between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours struggling aimlessly outdated. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the stray rocket first appears on sensors, the nation Bigelow’s film portrays has been destroyed utterly.
