A House of Dynamite: An Ambitious Political Thriller and Major Disappointment.
Bestowed upon an elite few, the title of Noted Film-maker can serve as an honor and a weight. On the beneficial side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this lens, film scholars may feel pressured to defend even their weakest efforts. (The rationale 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 titles can confine a creative to a constrained space, seeking out material befitting a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the dismay when a project falls flat is even more pronounced. A notable example has made its way to Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if feedback from movie enthusiasts are any guide – seems destined for only one recognition this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.
Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey
To determine why the film has disappointed many, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow earned her laurels with a succession of versatile and dynamic movies: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the enduring action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A sharper insight of her creative evolution came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an intense near-future drama, shaped by the Rodney King incident, which also served as a moral story about the dangers of rejecting actuality to seek shelter in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more alert to 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 forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled America’s recent military engagements in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the summer of Charlottesville, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s long history of racism.
You can understand why a artist following this path might be interested in Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who wrote Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the streamer would enthusiastically stump for a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One concept for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)
What Works and What Doesn't
Dynamite is at its most effective early on, describing in something like real time the 19 minutes in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by mysterious forces is spotted on the radars of a American military installation in Alaska and flagged to the presidential command center, heading for what everyone learns is its target: the heart of Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while undertaking an compelling countdown strategy: we’re left pondering where this feature-length movie can possibly go once the chronometer hits zero.
The outcome – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is a return to the start: the film subsequently shuffles between the perspectives of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the opening scene briefly seen or mentioned. In terms of construction, the film is unable to advance: it’s a two-hour movie with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section multiple times, each pass layering on debated technical details while inching everyone nearer the anticipated detonation. Previous Bigelow films had a tight grip on action and consequence; her most successful works as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the triggering event is also the concluding action; the story becomes engaging at the very second the film concludes. The personas are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for different reasons.
Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws
While the plot revolves in shrinking loops, like a bleak repetitive cycle, we’ve plenty of opportunity to consider the negative impact platform financing has had on the aesthetic of American cinema. Even on the large screen, Dynamite appeared as uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases recycling the same sets, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist disappears, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that opening reel as potentially another of this director’s strong female professionals, clocks off early, so once more it’s left to a cabal of frowning men to try to stop doomsday. The verve Bigelow contributed to her grittier initial successes vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the artist felt she had to curb her risk-taking, but a script this talky required some balancing visual flair.
The Core Fear and Final Analysis
The anxiety A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a director’s terror of being deemed insufficient; stiffening and almost petrifying as it unfolds, it’s understandable the film should have been overtaken by current, reshaping incidents. What this story presumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be skilled experts, deeply responsible and that the greatest danger to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like intensely involved commentaries on their time, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s latest projects to fall in the space between oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime 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 depicts has been shattered completely.
