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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 provide a shield: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this prism, film scholars may feel obliged to make excuses for even their poorest efforts. (The logic is that a subpar film by a Renowned Director is still more valuable than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One disadvantage is that such accolades can restrict a creative to a tight creative box, pursuing exclusively material worthy of a Noted Film-maker; another is that the dismay when a project fails to ignite is significantly amplified. A high-profile test case has recently arrived on Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if feedback from movie enthusiasts are any measure – seems nailed on for only one award this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.

Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey

To understand why the film has disappointed many, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow established her acclaim with a run of versatile and dynamic movies: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the timeless Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. Clearer indication of her artistic path came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an gripping future-now thriller, shaped by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also doubled as a cautionary fable about the perils of escaping from the real world to take cover in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more alert to this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet post-2001, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her the United States – was pushed into a reactive stance. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed America’s then-recent misadventures in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s long history of racism.

One can appreciate why a director with this background might be interested in Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who wrote Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the service would enthusiastically stump for a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One concept for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)

What Works and What Doesn't

Dynamite is at its most effective early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the brief period in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific by unknown parties is detected by sensors of a US army base in Alaska and flagged to the White House situation room, heading for what everyone learns is its target: the heart of Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim briskly accelerate the stakes while engaging in an intriguing temporal brinkmanship: we’re made to question where this two-hour film can possibly go once the timer reaches zero.

The answer – and this is where the letdowns start – is a revisit of the opening: the film subsequently shuffles between the viewpoints of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the prologue glimpsed or heard only in passing. From a narrative standpoint, the film is unable to advance: it’s a lengthy film with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel repeatedly, every iteration layering on moot procedural points while inching everyone nearer the feared explosion. 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 inciting incident is also the endgame; the story becomes engaging at the precise instant the film fades to black. The figures are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for different reasons.

Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws

While the situation cycles in diminishing returns, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve ample time to consider the deleterious effect Netflix money has had on the look of Hollywood productions. Even on the large screen, Dynamite seemed dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork evoking 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings employing identical backdrops, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist fades away, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that initial segment as potentially another of this director’s strong female professionals, clocks off early, so once more it’s up to a collection of stern males to try to avert global catastrophe. The verve Bigelow brought to her pulpier breakthrough films vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the director felt she had to rein in her bold choices, but a script this verbose required some balancing visual flair.

Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment

The dread A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a director’s terror of being thought unworthy; becoming rigid and almost petrifying as it unfolds, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been eclipsed by current, reshaping incidents. What this screenplay presumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be qualified professionals, deeply responsible and that the largest risk to Chicago in late 2025 would come from an origin beyond the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their moment, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s recent works to fall somewhere between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends two listless hours struggling aimlessly out of touch. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the stray rocket first registers on a radar, the nation Bigelow’s film portrays has been destroyed utterly.