Bestowed upon an elite few, the mantle of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the positive side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this lens, cinema analysts may feel obliged to defend even their least successful efforts. (The reasoning is that a disappointing film by a Noted Film-maker is still superior to the best work of a commercial director.) One downside is that such accolades can limit a creative to a constrained space, seeking out material befitting a Noted Film-maker; another is that the frustration when a project falls flat is even more pronounced. A high-profile example has made its way to Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if texts from cinephile pals are any indication – seems nailed on for only one recognition this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.
To understand why the film has disappointed many, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow built her reputation with a succession of expansive, limber genre pics: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the classic Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A more definite sign of her direction of travel came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an electrifying sci-fi suspense story, influenced by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also doubled as a cautionary fable about the perils of escaping from the real world to find refuge in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her native country – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty broached America’s then-recent misadventures in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, entered into a contentious dialogue with the country’s long history of racism.
It's easy to see why a director with this background might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who scripted Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the service would enthusiastically stump for a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One idea for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
Dynamite is at its strongest early on, depicting in near real-time the brief period in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific region by unknown parties is detected by sensors of a American military installation in Alaska and alerted to the executive briefing area, traveling to what everyone learns is its objective: the heart of Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while engaging in an intriguing temporal brinkmanship: we’re set to wondering where this two-hour film can possibly head once the chronometer reaches zero.
The outcome – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is back to the beginning: the film then shifts between the viewpoints of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the introduction glimpsed or heard only in passing. In terms of construction, the film fails to progress: it’s a two-hour movie with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel repeatedly, each repetition trowelling on moot procedural points while edging everybody closer the feared explosion. Earlier Bigelow films had a strong control on cause-and-effect; her best films as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the triggering event is also the final play; the narrative captivates at the precise instant the film ends. The figures are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for different reasons.
While the scenario cycles in diminishing returns, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve ample time to consider the deleterious effect Netflix money has had on the visual style of American cinema. Even on the big screen, Dynamite struck the eye as dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings recycling the same sets, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director fades away, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that beginning part as potentially another of this director’s strong female professionals, clocks off early, so again it’s the responsibility of a group of serious male figures to try to prevent the world’s end. The verve Bigelow brought to her more genre-oriented early hits disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the artist felt she had to restrain her bold choices, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some balancing visual flair.
The anxiety A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a artist's anxiety of being considered inadequate; tensing up and practically fossilising as it unfolds, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been surpassed by current, reshaping incidents. What this story presumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be skilled experts, conscientious to the core and that the biggest threat to Chicago in the latter part of 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where previous Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their time, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s newer films to fall somewhere between oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime struggling aimlessly behind the curve. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the stray rocket first registers on a radar, the nation Bigelow’s film portrays has been shattered completely.
Milan is een ervaren opticien met een passie voor visuele technologie en klantgerichtheid.
