A House of Dynamite: A Political Fantasy and Major Disappointment.
Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the designation of Esteemed Director 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 lens, auteurist critics may feel compelled to defend even their weakest efforts. (The reasoning is that a disappointing film by a Noted Film-maker is still more valuable than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One drawback is that such accolades can restrict a creative to a constrained space, searching only for material worthy of a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the frustration when a project fails to ignite is all the greater. A high-profile instance has recently arrived on Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if texts from cinephile pals are any measure – seems assured of only one award this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.
Retracing the Director's Steps
To ascertain the reasons the film has underwhelmed so, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow built her reputation with a series of broad, agile genre films: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the enduring Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A more definite sign of her creative evolution came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an electrifying near-future drama, shaped by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also doubled as a moral story about the dangers of abandoning reality to find refuge in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, now preparing the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her native country – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed America’s contemporary conflicts in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the summer of Charlottesville, entered into a contentious dialogue with the country’s extended past of racism.
It's easy to see why a artist following this path might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who scripted Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the streamer would vigorously back a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One concept for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses
Dynamite is at its strongest early on, describing in something like real time the short interval in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific region by mysterious forces is spotted on the radars of a United States outpost in Alaska and reported to the White House situation room, heading for what everyone learns is its objective: central Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while undertaking an compelling countdown strategy: we’re made to question where this full-length production can possibly head once the countdown clock hits zero.
The response – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is back to the beginning: the film then shifts between the perspectives of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the introduction briefly seen or mentioned. In terms of construction, the film fails to progress: it’s a two-hour movie with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section multiple times, every iteration trowelling on debated technical details while inching everyone nearer the feared explosion. Earlier Bigelow films had a firm hold on action and consequence; her finest achievements as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the catalytic moment is also the concluding action; the drama gets interesting at the exact moment the film fades to black. The personas are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for separate causes.
Stylistic and Conceptual Issues
While the scenario revolves in shrinking loops, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve ample time to consider the deleterious effect platform financing has had on the aesthetic of U.S. films. Even on the large screen, Dynamite struck the eye as uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases recycling the same sets, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that opening reel as possibly one more of this director’s strong female professionals, 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 pulpier breakthrough films vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the artist felt she had to curb her bold choices, but a script this talky required some offsetting dramatic intensity.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The anxiety A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a director’s terror of being deemed insufficient; becoming rigid 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 in charge of critical decisions would be skilled experts, deeply responsible and that the largest risk to Chicago in late 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their era, Dynamite – the first of this director’s latest projects to fall somewhere between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime struggling aimlessly outdated. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the unauthorized projectile first is detected, the nation Bigelow’s film depicts has been blown to smithereens.
