A House of Dynamite: A Political Fantasy and Major Disappointment.
Bestowed upon an elite few, the designation of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as an honor and a weight. On the positive side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this prism, cinema analysts may feel compelled to make excuses for even their least successful efforts. (The rationale is that a disappointing film by a Renowned Director is still better than the best work of a commercial director.) One drawback is that such accolades can restrict a creative to a tight creative box, pursuing exclusively material suitable for a Noted Film-maker; another is that the disappointment when a project doesn't spark is all the greater. A prominent example has made its way to Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if messages from film buff friends are any indication – seems assured of only one honor this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey
To ascertain the reasons the film has underwhelmed so, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow earned her laurels with a succession of expansive, limber genre pics: biker flick The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the timeless Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. Clearer indication of her artistic path came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an gripping near-future drama, informed by the Rodney King case, which also doubled as a moral story about the risks of escaping from the real world to seek shelter in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet post-2001, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her the United States – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled America’s recent military engagements in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the period following the Charlottesville events, entered into a contentious dialogue with the country’s extended past of racism.
You can understand why a film-maker on this trajectory might be interested in Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who penned Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series 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: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its strongest early on, describing in something like real time the brief period in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific region by unknown parties is spotted on the radars of a US army base in Alaska and alerted to the presidential command center, en route towards what everyone learns is its objective: the heart of Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while engaging in an compelling countdown strategy: we’re made to question where this full-length production can possibly head once the timer expires.
The response – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is back to the beginning: the film then shifts between the angles of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ general, secretary of defence Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the prologue glimpsed or heard only in passing. In terms of construction, the film fails to progress: it’s a extended runtime with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel repeatedly, every iteration adding on contested bureaucratic steps while inching everyone nearer the anticipated detonation. Earlier Bigelow films had a strong control on cause-and-effect; her best films as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the inciting incident is also the endgame; the narrative captivates at the very second the film concludes. The characters are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for separate causes.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the plot spins in ever decreasing circles, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve ample time to reflect on the harmful influence streaming budgets has had on the aesthetic of Hollywood productions. Even on the large screen, Dynamite seemed flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing evoking 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings recycling the same sets, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that initial segment as potentially another of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, exits prematurely, so once more it’s left to a group of serious male figures to try to avert global catastrophe. The energy Bigelow contributed to her pulpier breakthrough films vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the director felt she had to rein in her risk-taking, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some offsetting dramatic intensity.
The Core Fear and Final Analysis
The anxiety A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a filmmaker's fear of being considered inadequate; tensing up and practically fossilising as it progresses, it’s not unexpected the film should have been overtaken by contemporary, reframing developments. What this screenplay presumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be trained specialists, deeply responsible and that the greatest danger to Chicago in the latter part of 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like intensely involved commentaries on their time, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s newer films to fall in the space between afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime clawing futilely out of touch. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the rogue missile first registers on a radar, the United States Bigelow’s film depicts has been blown to smithereens.
