The Film A House of Dynamite: A Political Fantasy and Major Disappointment.
Bestowed upon an elite few, the designation of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the beneficial side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this prism, auteurist critics may feel pressured to make excuses for even their weakest efforts. (The rationale is that a lackluster film by a Prestigious Auteur is still better than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One drawback is that such titles can restrict a creative to a very narrow courtyard, seeking out material befitting a Esteemed Director; another is that the frustration when a project doesn't spark is even more pronounced. A prominent instance has made its way to Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if texts from cinephile pals are any guide – seems nailed on for only one award this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.
Examining Bigelow's Career Path
To determine why the film has failed to impress, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow built her reputation with a run of broad, agile genre films: biker flick The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the timeless Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A sharper insight of her creative evolution came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an gripping sci-fi suspense story, shaped by the Rodney King incident, which also served as a warning tale about the perils of escaping from the real world to seek shelter 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 post-2001, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her homeland – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed America’s recent military engagements in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s extended past of racism.
One can appreciate why a film-maker on this trajectory might be interested in Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who penned Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the platform would vigorously back a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One concept for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)
High Points and Low Points
Dynamite is at its most effective early on, describing in something like real time the brief period in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by mysterious forces is picked up on screens of a US army base in Alaska and reported to the White House situation room, traveling to what everyone learns is its target: central Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while engaging in an compelling countdown strategy: we’re set to wondering where this feature-length movie can possibly proceed once the chronometer expires.
The response – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is a return to the start: the film later moves between the viewpoints 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. From a narrative standpoint, the film fails to progress: it’s a two-hour movie with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel again and again, every iteration trowelling on debated technical details while moving all parties toward the dreaded big bang. Earlier Bigelow films had a tight grip on action and consequence; her best films as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the catalytic moment is also the endgame; the narrative captivates at the exact moment the film ends. The figures are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for different reasons.
Visual and Thematic Shortcomings
While the situation revolves in shrinking loops, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve plenty of opportunity to reflect on the deleterious effect streaming budgets has had on the visual style of Hollywood productions. Even on the large screen, Dynamite struck the eye as dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing evoking 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases reusing familiar locations, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist fades away, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that initial segment as perhaps an additional of this director’s strong female professionals, clocks off early, so yet again it’s up to a collection of stern males to try to stop doomsday. The energy Bigelow infused into her more genre-oriented early hits vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the director felt she had to curb her bold choices, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some offsetting dramatic intensity.
The Core Fear and Final Analysis
The fear A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a director’s terror of being deemed insufficient; tensing up and almost petrifying as it progresses, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been overtaken by contemporary, reframing developments. What this script presumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be skilled experts, conscientious to the core and that the greatest danger to Chicago in late 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their moment, Dynamite – the first of this director’s newer films to fall in a gray area of neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends two listless hours struggling aimlessly behind the curve. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the rogue missile first appears on sensors, the United States Bigelow’s film portrays has been blown to smithereens.
