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Bestowed upon an elite few, the designation of Noted Film-maker can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the positive side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this perspective, film scholars may feel pressured to defend even their least successful efforts. (The rationale is that a subpar film by a Renowned Director is still more valuable than the best work of a routine filmmaker.) One drawback is that such accolades can limit a creative to a tight creative box, searching only for material befitting a Noted Film-maker; another is that the frustration when a project falls flat is even more pronounced. A notable instance has made its way to Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if texts from cinephile pals are any indication – seems destined for only one recognition this season: that for Biggest Letdown.

Retracing the Director's Steps

To ascertain the reasons the film has failed to impress, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow built her reputation with a succession of broad, agile genre films: biker flick The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the timeless Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A more definite sign of her direction of travel came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an intense sci-fi suspense story, shaped by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also functioned as a warning tale about the perils of rejecting actuality to seek shelter in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more alert to this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her native country – was pushed into a reactive stance. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled America’s then-recent misadventures in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, entered into a contentious dialogue with the country’s long history of racism.

One can appreciate why a artist following this path might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who wrote Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the platform would vigorously back a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One concept for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)

What Works and What Doesn't

Dynamite is at its strongest early on, depicting in near real-time the 19 minutes in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific by mysterious forces is spotted on the radars of a United States outpost in Alaska and reported to the executive briefing area, traveling to what everyone learns is its objective: central Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while participating in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re left pondering where this full-length production can possibly go once the countdown clock reaches zero.

The response – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is a revisit of the opening: the film subsequently shuffles between the angles of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ military officer, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene briefly seen or mentioned. Structurally, the film can’t develop: it’s a lengthy film with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment multiple times, each repetition trowelling on debated technical details while inching everyone nearer the anticipated detonation. Previous Bigelow films had a firm hold on cause-and-effect; her best films as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the inciting incident is also the concluding action; the story becomes engaging at the very second the film ends. The personas are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.

Visual and Thematic Shortcomings

While the plot spins in ever decreasing circles, like a bleak repetitive cycle, we’ve plenty of opportunity to ponder the deleterious effect platform financing has had on the visual style of American cinema. Even on the large screen, Dynamite seemed flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork recalling 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings employing identical backdrops, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist disappears, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that opening reel as possibly one more of this director’s strong female professionals, exits prematurely, so yet again it’s the responsibility of a group of serious male figures to try to stop doomsday. The passion Bigelow infused into her more genre-oriented early hits is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the director felt she had to curb her bold choices, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some offsetting dramatic intensity.

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 deemed insufficient; stiffening and virtually solidifying as it goes along, it’s understandable the film should have been eclipsed by recent, recontextualising events. What this screenplay assumes is that those holding roles of command would be skilled experts, conscientious to the core and that the largest risk to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their time, Dynamite – the first of this director’s newer films to fall in a gray area of oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime struggling aimlessly outdated. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the unauthorized projectile first is detected, the United States Bigelow’s film describes has been blown to smithereens.