Bestowed upon an elite few, the designation of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the beneficial side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this lens, cinema analysts may feel pressured to defend even their weakest efforts. (The reasoning is that a disappointing film by a Prestigious Auteur is still more valuable than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One drawback is that such accolades can limit a creative to a very narrow courtyard, seeking out material worthy of a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the frustration when a project doesn't spark is all the greater. A notable test case has just reached Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if texts from cinephile pals are any guide – seems assured of only one honor this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.
Examining Bigelow's Career Path
To determine why the film has failed to impress, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow earned her laurels with a series of expansive, limber genre pics: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the enduring Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. Clearer indication of her artistic path came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an electrifying future-now thriller, informed by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also served as a cautionary fable about the perils of abandoning reality to seek shelter in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her the United States – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty broached America’s recent military engagements in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the summer of Charlottesville, entered into a heated debate with the country’s long history of racism.
One can appreciate why a director with this background might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who penned Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the streamer would enthusiastically stump for a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One pitch for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses
Dynamite is at its most effective early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the 19 minutes in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific by unknown parties is picked up on screens of a United States outpost in Alaska and alerted to the White House situation room, traveling to what everyone learns is its objective: central Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim briskly accelerate the stakes while engaging in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re made to question where this full-length production can possibly proceed once the chronometer hits zero.
The answer – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is back to the beginning: the film subsequently shuffles between the angles of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the prologue only partially revealed. In terms of construction, the film fails to progress: it’s a lengthy film with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel again and again, each repetition adding on debated technical details while moving all parties toward the feared explosion. Prior Bigelow films had a strong control on stimulus and response; her most successful works as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the inciting incident is also the final play; the story becomes engaging at the exact moment the film fades to black. The personas are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for different reasons.
Visual and Thematic Shortcomings
While the scenario cycles in diminishing returns, like a bleak repetitive cycle, we’ve ample time to reflect on the negative impact Netflix money has had on the look of Hollywood productions. Even on the big screen, Dynamite seemed uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork evoking 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings reusing familiar locations, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director fades away, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that initial segment as perhaps an additional of this director’s tough-minded working women, exits prematurely, so again it’s the responsibility of a cabal of frowning men to try to stop doomsday. The passion Bigelow contributed to her grittier initial successes is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the film-maker felt she had to restrain her risk-taking, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some balancing visual flair.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The anxiety A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a director’s terror of being thought unworthy; becoming rigid and virtually solidifying as it goes along, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been surpassed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this script assumes is that those holding roles of command would be qualified professionals, deeply responsible and that the biggest threat to Chicago in late 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their time, Dynamite – the first of this director’s latest projects to fall in a gray area of afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours scrabbling around hopelessly outdated. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the unauthorized projectile first is detected, the nation Bigelow’s film describes has been blown to smithereens.
