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Bestowed upon an elite few, 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, auteurist critics may feel compelled to justify even their least successful efforts. (The logic is that a disappointing film by a Renowned Director is still superior to the best work of a jobbing hack.) One disadvantage is that such accolades can limit a creative to a very narrow courtyard, searching only for material befitting a Noted Film-maker; another is that the disappointment when a project fails to ignite is even more pronounced. A notable instance has recently arrived on Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if messages from film buff friends are any measure – seems nailed on for only one award this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.

Retracing the Director's Steps

To understand why the film has failed to impress, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow built her reputation with a run of versatile and dynamic movies: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the classic Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A more definite sign of her creative evolution came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an gripping near-future drama, shaped by the Rodney King incident, which also functioned as a cautionary fable about the perils of escaping from the real world to seek shelter in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet post-2001, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her homeland – 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 period following the Charlottesville events, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s extended past of racism.

One can appreciate why a director with this background might be interested in Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who scripted Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the platform would enthusiastically stump for a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One idea for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)

High Points and Low Points

Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, depicting in near 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 US army base in Alaska and reported to the executive briefing area, heading for what everyone learns is its target: the heart of Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while engaging in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re left pondering where this full-length production can possibly go once the chronometer expires.

The response – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is a return to the start: the film later moves between the viewpoints of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ military officer, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the introduction glimpsed or heard only in passing. From a narrative standpoint, the film is unable to advance: it’s a extended runtime with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section multiple times, each pass layering on moot procedural points while edging everybody closer the feared explosion. Earlier Bigelow films had a strong control on stimulus and response; her best films as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the triggering event is also the concluding action; the narrative captivates at the precise instant the film ends. The personas are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.

Visual and Thematic Shortcomings

While the scenario revolves in shrinking loops, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve plenty of opportunity to reflect on the harmful influence platform financing has had on the visual style of American cinema. Even on the big screen, Dynamite appeared as uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content employing identical backdrops, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist fades away, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that opening reel as possibly one more of this director’s strong female professionals, exits prematurely, so once more it’s up to a collection of stern males to try to avert global catastrophe. The energy Bigelow infused into her grittier initial successes is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the film-maker felt she had to restrain her risk-taking, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some balancing visual flair.

The Core Fear and Final Analysis

The fear A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a artist's anxiety of being thought unworthy; becoming rigid and virtually solidifying as it progresses, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been overtaken by current, reshaping incidents. What this script assumes is that those occupying positions of operational authority would be trained specialists, conscientious to the core and that the largest risk to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from an origin beyond the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like intensely involved commentaries on their time, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s newer films to fall somewhere between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends two listless hours struggling aimlessly behind the curve. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the unauthorized projectile first is detected, the United States Bigelow’s film portrays has been blown to smithereens.