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Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the title of Noted Film-maker can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the beneficial side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this perspective, film scholars may feel obliged to make excuses for even their poorest efforts. (The reasoning is that a subpar film by a Prestigious Auteur is still better than the best work of a routine filmmaker.) One downside is that such accolades can limit a creative to a tight creative box, seeking out material worthy of a Noted Film-maker; another is that the dismay when a project fails to ignite is all the greater. A prominent example has recently arrived on Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if texts from cinephile pals are any indication – seems nailed on for only one recognition this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.

Retracing the Director's Steps

To determine why the film has failed to impress, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow established her acclaim with a series of versatile and dynamic movies: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the classic Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. Clearer indication of her direction of travel came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an gripping future-now thriller, informed by the Rodney King case, which also served as a moral story about the dangers of abandoning reality to seek shelter in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, now preparing the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, 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 contemporary conflicts in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, entered into a heated debate with the country’s long history of racism.

One can appreciate why a director with this background might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who scripted Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the service would strongly support a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One pitch for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)

What Works and What Doesn't

Dynamite is at its strongest early on, describing in something like real time the brief period in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific region by mysterious forces is picked up on screens of a United States outpost in Alaska and flagged to the White House situation room, en route towards what everyone learns is its target: downtown Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while engaging in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re left pondering where this two-hour film can possibly head once the countdown clock expires.

The outcome – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is a return to the start: the film subsequently shuffles between the viewpoints of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ military officer, secretary of defence Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the prologue glimpsed or heard only in passing. From a narrative standpoint, the film fails to progress: it’s a lengthy film with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel multiple times, every iteration adding on debated technical details while edging everybody closer the anticipated detonation. Previous Bigelow films had a firm hold on cause-and-effect; her finest achievements as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the inciting incident is also the final play; the story becomes engaging at the exact moment the film ends. The figures are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.

Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws

While the plot cycles in diminishing returns, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve sufficient moments to reflect on the harmful influence platform financing has had on the aesthetic of U.S. films. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite seemed dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing evoking 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings recycling the same sets, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that beginning part as possibly one more of this director’s strong female professionals, leaves the story too soon, so once more it’s the responsibility of a cabal of frowning men to try to stop doomsday. The energy Bigelow brought to her more genre-oriented early hits vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the director felt she had to restrain her bold choices, but a script this verbose required some balancing visual flair.

Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts

The anxiety A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a director’s terror of being thought unworthy; tensing up and almost petrifying as it unfolds, it’s understandable the film should have been overtaken by contemporary, reframing developments. What this story presumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be trained specialists, deeply responsible and that the biggest threat to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like intensely involved commentaries on their era, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s latest projects to fall in a gray area of afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends two listless hours clawing futilely behind the curve. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the stray rocket first is detected, the United States Bigelow’s film depicts has been shattered completely.