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Bestowed upon an elite few, the mantle of Noted Film-maker can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the favorable side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an celebrated director through this prism, film scholars may feel compelled to justify even their weakest efforts. (The logic is that a lackluster film by a Renowned Director is still more valuable than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One downside is that such accolades can confine a creative to a constrained space, searching only for material worthy of a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the dismay when a project fails to ignite is significantly amplified. A prominent instance has made its way to Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if messages from film buff friends are any indication – seems nailed on for only one recognition this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.

Retracing the Director's Steps

To understand why the film has disappointed many, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow established her acclaim with a series of expansive, limber genre pics: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the timeless action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A more definite sign of her artistic path came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an electrifying future-now thriller, influenced by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also doubled as a warning tale about the dangers of rejecting actuality to take cover in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her native country – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed 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 extended past of racism.

You can understand why a film-maker on this trajectory might be interested in Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who scripted Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the platform would enthusiastically stump for a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One idea for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)

What Works and What Doesn't

Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the brief period in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific by mysterious forces is detected by sensors of a US army base in Alaska and reported to the executive briefing area, en route towards what everyone learns is its objective: the heart of Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while undertaking an intriguing temporal brinkmanship: we’re made to question where this full-length production can possibly go once the countdown clock reaches zero.

The outcome – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is a return to the start: the film then shifts between the angles of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the prologue only partially revealed. Structurally, the film is unable to advance: it’s a lengthy film with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel again and again, each repetition layering on moot procedural points while moving all parties toward the anticipated detonation. Earlier Bigelow films had a strong control on action and consequence; her best films as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the catalytic moment is also the endgame; the story becomes engaging at the very second the film ends. The personas are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for separate causes.

Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws

While the scenario spins in ever decreasing circles, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve sufficient moments to consider the deleterious effect streaming budgets has had on the visual style of U.S. films. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite appeared as dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing recalling 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content employing identical backdrops, extending to 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 possibly one more of this director’s tough-minded working women, leaves the story too soon, so yet again it’s left to a collection of stern males to try to prevent the world’s end. The verve Bigelow infused into her pulpier breakthrough films vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the director felt she had to rein in her experimental tendencies, but a script this verbose required some compensatory pyrotechnics.

Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment

The fear A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a filmmaker's fear of being considered inadequate; tensing up and practically fossilising as it unfolds, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been overtaken by recent, recontextualising events. What this story takes for granted is that those in charge of critical decisions would be skilled experts, fundamentally diligent and that the largest risk to Chicago in the latter part of 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their time, Dynamite – the first of this director’s latest projects to fall somewhere between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends two listless hours clawing futilely out of touch. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the rogue missile first registers on a radar, the United States Bigelow’s film portrays has been shattered completely.