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Bestowed upon an elite few, the mantle of Acclaimed Auteur 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 prism, film scholars may feel compelled to justify even their weakest efforts. (The rationale is that a disappointing film by a Renowned Director is still better than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One disadvantage is that such accolades can limit a creative to a constrained space, pursuing exclusively material worthy of a Esteemed Director; another is that the dismay when a project doesn't spark is even more pronounced. A notable test case has made its way to Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if texts from cinephile pals are any indication – seems assured of only one award this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.

Retracing the Director's Steps

To determine why the film has failed to impress, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow established her acclaim with a series of expansive, limber genre pics: biker flick The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the timeless Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A sharper insight of her direction of travel came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an gripping future-now thriller, informed by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also served as a cautionary fable about the risks of rejecting actuality to seek shelter in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, now preparing the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her homeland – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty broached America’s contemporary conflicts in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the summer of Charlottesville, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s extended past of racism.

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

The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses

Dynamite is at its most effective early on, depicting in near real-time the 19 minutes in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by unknown parties is spotted on the radars of a American military installation in Alaska and flagged to the White House situation room, traveling to what everyone learns is its target: central 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 feature-length movie can possibly proceed once the chronometer expires.

The outcome – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is a return to the start: the film later moves between the perspectives of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene glimpsed or heard only in passing. From a narrative standpoint, the film can’t develop: it’s a lengthy film with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel repeatedly, every iteration adding on moot procedural points while edging everybody closer the feared explosion. Previous Bigelow films had a strong control on action and consequence; her finest achievements as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the catalytic moment is also the endgame; the drama gets interesting at the precise instant the film fades to black. The figures are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for different reasons.

Stylistic and Conceptual Issues

While the situation spins in ever decreasing circles, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve ample time to ponder the negative impact Netflix money has had on the aesthetic of American cinema. Even on the big screen, Dynamite appeared as dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing recalling 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases recycling the same sets, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that opening reel as potentially another of this director’s tough-minded working women, leaves the story too soon, so again it’s the responsibility of a cabal of frowning men to try to avert global catastrophe. The passion Bigelow brought to her more genre-oriented early hits disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the director felt she had to curb her risk-taking, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some balancing visual flair.

Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts

The fear A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a filmmaker's fear of being deemed insufficient; becoming rigid and practically fossilising as it progresses, it’s not unexpected the film should have been overtaken by contemporary, reframing developments. What this screenplay takes for granted is that those in charge of critical decisions would be skilled experts, fundamentally diligent and that the greatest danger to Chicago in the latter part of 2025 would come from an origin beyond the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their moment, Dynamite – the first of this director’s latest projects to fall somewhere between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime clawing futilely outdated. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the rogue missile first registers on a radar, the America Bigelow’s film portrays has been shattered completely.