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Bestowed upon a select group, the mantle of Esteemed Director can serve as an honor and a weight. On the positive side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an celebrated director through this prism, film scholars may feel compelled to justify even their poorest efforts. (The rationale is that a subpar film by a Noted Film-maker is still better than the best work of a routine filmmaker.) One drawback is that such accolades can limit a creative to a tight creative box, pursuing exclusively material befitting a Noted Film-maker; another is that the frustration when a project fails to ignite is all the greater. A notable instance has made its way to Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if feedback from movie enthusiasts are any guide – seems nailed on for only one honor this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.

Retracing the Director's Steps

To ascertain the reasons the film has disappointed many, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow earned her laurels with a succession of expansive, limber genre pics: biker flick The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the classic Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A sharper insight of her direction of travel came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an gripping sci-fi suspense story, influenced by the Rodney King incident, which also served as a moral story about the perils of rejecting actuality to find refuge in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet post-2001, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her native country – was pushed into a reactive stance. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty broached America’s recent military engagements 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 film-maker on this trajectory might be interested in Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who scripted Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the service would strongly support a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One pitch for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)

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 unknown parties is spotted on the radars of a United States outpost in Alaska and reported to the presidential command center, heading for what everyone learns is its objective: central 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 full-length production can possibly proceed once the chronometer hits zero.

The outcome – and this is where the letdowns start – is a revisit of the opening: the film then shifts between the angles of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ military officer, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene only partially revealed. Structurally, the film fails to progress: it’s a extended runtime with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section again and again, each pass trowelling on moot procedural points while moving all parties toward 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 inherently about outcomes. But here, the catalytic moment is also the endgame; the narrative captivates at the very second the film concludes. The personas are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.

Visual and Thematic Shortcomings

While the scenario cycles in diminishing returns, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve sufficient moments to reflect on the negative impact Netflix money has had on the aesthetic of Hollywood productions. Even on the large screen, Dynamite seemed uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing evoking 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content recycling the same sets, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director disappears, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that beginning part as perhaps an additional of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, clocks off early, so yet again it’s left to a cabal of frowning men to try to avert global catastrophe. The verve Bigelow contributed to her grittier initial successes is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the film-maker felt she had to curb her bold choices, but a script this talky required some balancing visual flair.

The Core Fear and Final Analysis

The anxiety A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t global eradication, but a filmmaker's fear of being thought unworthy; stiffening and almost petrifying as it unfolds, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been eclipsed by current, reshaping incidents. What this screenplay assumes is that those holding roles of command would be qualified professionals, conscientious to the core and that the biggest threat to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like intensely involved commentaries on their era, Dynamite – the first of this director’s newer films to fall in the space between afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours scrabbling around hopelessly out of touch. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the unauthorized projectile first appears on sensors, the United States Bigelow’s film depicts has been destroyed utterly.