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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 positive side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this prism, cinema analysts may feel compelled to make excuses for even their poorest efforts. (The logic is that a subpar film by a Prestigious Auteur is still better than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One disadvantage is that such accolades can restrict a creative to a very narrow courtyard, searching only for material suitable for a Noted Film-maker; another is that the dismay when a project falls flat is significantly amplified. A notable example has recently arrived on Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if messages from film buff friends are any guide – seems nailed on for only one recognition this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.

Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey

To ascertain the reasons the film has underwhelmed so, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow earned her laurels with a succession of expansive, limber genre pics: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the enduring action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A more definite sign of her creative evolution came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an intense near-future drama, influenced by the Rodney King case, which also doubled as a warning tale about the perils of escaping from the real world to seek shelter in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet post-2001, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her native country – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled America’s recent military engagements in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the period following the Charlottesville events, entered into a contentious dialogue with the country’s extended past of racism.

It's easy to see why a director with this background might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who penned Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the streamer would strongly support a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One pitch for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)

What Works and What Doesn't

Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the short interval in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific region by unknown parties is detected by sensors of a United States outpost in Alaska and flagged to the White House situation room, en route towards what everyone learns is its target: the heart of 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 two-hour film can possibly go once the countdown clock hits zero.

The outcome – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is back to the beginning: the film later moves between the angles of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ military officer, secretary of defence Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the prologue briefly seen or mentioned. Structurally, the film can’t develop: it’s a two-hour movie with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel repeatedly, each pass adding on debated technical details while inching everyone nearer the feared explosion. Prior Bigelow films had a strong control on cause-and-effect; her most successful works as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the inciting incident is also the endgame; the story becomes engaging at the exact moment the film concludes. The figures are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for different reasons.

Visual and Thematic Shortcomings

While the scenario cycles in diminishing returns, like a bleak repetitive cycle, we’ve plenty of opportunity to consider the harmful influence Netflix money has had on the aesthetic of U.S. films. Even on the large screen, Dynamite seemed dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings reusing familiar locations, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director fades away, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that initial segment as possibly one more of this director’s tough-minded working women, clocks off early, so yet again it’s the responsibility of a cabal of frowning men to try to stop doomsday. The passion Bigelow infused into her pulpier breakthrough films disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the artist felt she had to restrain her experimental tendencies, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some compensatory pyrotechnics.

Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts

The anxiety A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a filmmaker's fear of being considered inadequate; stiffening and virtually solidifying as it unfolds, it’s understandable the film should have been eclipsed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this story takes for granted is that those in charge of critical decisions would be skilled experts, deeply responsible and that the largest risk to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where previous Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their era, Dynamite – the first of this director’s recent works to fall in a gray area of afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours scrabbling around hopelessly outdated. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the stray rocket first registers on a radar, the nation Bigelow’s film depicts has been destroyed utterly.