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Bestowed upon a select group, the designation of Noted Film-maker can serve as an honor and a weight. On the positive side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this perspective, film scholars may feel pressured to justify even their poorest efforts. (The rationale is that a subpar film by a Renowned Director is still superior to the best work of a routine filmmaker.) One drawback is that such accolades can confine a creative to a very narrow courtyard, searching only for material suitable for a Esteemed Director; another is that the frustration when a project doesn't spark is significantly amplified. A prominent test case has recently arrived on Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if texts from cinephile pals are any measure – seems nailed on for only one recognition this season: that for Biggest Letdown.

Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey

To determine why the film has disappointed many, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow built her reputation with a series of expansive, limber genre pics: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the timeless Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A more definite sign of her direction of travel came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an intense near-future drama, influenced by the Rodney King case, which also served as a warning tale about the dangers of abandoning reality to take cover in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more alert to this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her homeland – 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 summer of Charlottesville, entered into a heated debate with the country’s long history of racism.

One can appreciate why a film-maker on this trajectory might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who penned Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the service would vigorously back a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One pitch for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)

The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses

Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, describing in something like real time the 19 minutes in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by mysterious forces is spotted on the radars of a American military installation in Alaska and flagged to the White House situation room, traveling to what everyone learns is its target: the heart of Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while engaging in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re left pondering where this full-length production can possibly proceed once the timer hits zero.

The outcome – and this is where the letdowns start – is a return to the start: the film then shifts between the viewpoints of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the prologue only partially revealed. In terms of construction, the film is unable to advance: it’s a extended runtime with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel repeatedly, each pass trowelling on contested bureaucratic steps while moving all parties toward the feared explosion. Prior Bigelow films had a strong control on stimulus and response; her best films as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the triggering event is also the concluding action; the drama gets interesting at the precise instant the film fades to black. The characters are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for different reasons.

Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws

While the scenario spins in ever decreasing circles, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve sufficient moments to consider the harmful influence Netflix money has had on the visual style of American cinema. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite struck the eye as uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content recycling the same sets, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker disappears, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that beginning part as potentially another of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, leaves the story too soon, so again it’s left to a group of serious male figures to try to avert global catastrophe. The passion Bigelow brought to her grittier initial successes vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the film-maker felt she had to curb her experimental tendencies, but a script this verbose required some compensatory pyrotechnics.

The Core Fear and Final Analysis

The fear A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a director’s terror of being deemed insufficient; tensing up and practically fossilising as it unfolds, it’s not unexpected the film should have been eclipsed by current, reshaping incidents. What this story presumes is that those occupying positions of operational authority would be trained specialists, fundamentally diligent and that the biggest threat to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from an origin beyond the White House. Where previous Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their era, Dynamite – the first of this director’s recent works to fall somewhere between oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours scrabbling around hopelessly behind the curve. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the stray rocket first registers on a radar, the America Bigelow’s film describes has been destroyed utterly.