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Bestowed upon a select group, 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 ennobled director through this prism, auteurist critics may feel obliged to defend even their weakest efforts. (The logic 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 confine a creative to a tight creative box, searching only for material worthy of a Esteemed Director; another is that the dismay when a project doesn't spark is even more pronounced. A prominent instance has just reached Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if feedback from movie enthusiasts are any guide – seems nailed on for only one award this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.

Examining Bigelow's Career Path

To ascertain the reasons the film has underwhelmed so, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow earned her laurels with a series of versatile and dynamic movies: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the enduring Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A sharper insight of her artistic path came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an electrifying near-future drama, shaped by the Rodney King case, which also doubled as a cautionary fable about the dangers of escaping from the real world 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 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 addressed America’s then-recent misadventures in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the period following the Charlottesville events, entered into a contentious dialogue with the country’s deep-seated legacy of racism.

You can understand why a film-maker on this trajectory might be interested in Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who scripted Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the platform would vigorously back a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One concept for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)

The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses

Dynamite is at its strongest early on, describing in something like real time the 19 minutes in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific region 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 target: downtown Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim briskly accelerate the stakes while engaging in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re set to wondering where this feature-length movie can possibly go once the timer reaches zero.

The answer – and this is where the letdowns start – 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 prologue briefly seen or mentioned. In terms of construction, the film is unable to advance: it’s a two-hour movie with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section again and again, each pass adding on contested bureaucratic steps while inching everyone nearer the dreaded big bang. Earlier Bigelow films had a tight grip on cause-and-effect; her finest achievements as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the inciting incident is also the final play; the drama gets interesting at the exact moment the film concludes. The figures are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for different reasons.

Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws

While the plot spins in ever decreasing circles, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve plenty of opportunity to reflect on the deleterious effect streaming budgets has had on the aesthetic of Hollywood productions. Even on the large screen, Dynamite appeared as flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings reusing familiar locations, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist disappears, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that initial segment as potentially another of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, exits prematurely, so once more it’s up to a group of serious male figures to try to prevent the world’s end. The verve Bigelow contributed to her pulpier breakthrough films disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the artist felt she had to restrain her experimental tendencies, but a script this verbose required some compensatory pyrotechnics.

The Core Fear and Final Analysis

The anxiety A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a director’s terror of being thought unworthy; becoming rigid and practically fossilising as it progresses, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been overtaken by contemporary, reframing developments. What this screenplay assumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be skilled experts, conscientious to the core and that the largest risk to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where previous Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their time, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s recent works to fall somewhere between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours clawing futilely behind the curve. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the rogue missile first appears on sensors, the United States Bigelow’s film portrays has been shattered completely.