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Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the mantle of Esteemed Director can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the beneficial side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this lens, cinema analysts may feel pressured to make excuses for even their weakest efforts. (The logic is that a lackluster film by a Noted Film-maker is still more valuable than the best work of a routine filmmaker.) One drawback is that such titles can confine a creative to a very narrow courtyard, seeking out material suitable for a Esteemed Director; another is that the disappointment when a project fails to ignite is even more pronounced. A notable instance has just reached Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if texts from cinephile pals are any indication – seems destined for only one honor this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.

Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey

To determine why the film has underwhelmed so, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow established her acclaim with a succession of expansive, limber genre pics: biker flick The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the classic action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A sharper insight of her artistic path came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an electrifying near-future drama, informed by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also doubled as a moral story about the dangers of escaping from the real world to find refuge in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more attentive to 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 reputation growing, Bigelow – like her the United States – 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.

One can appreciate why a film-maker on this trajectory might be interested in Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who scripted Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the service would enthusiastically stump for a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One idea for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)

The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses

Dynamite is at its strongest early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the short interval in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by mysterious forces is detected by sensors of a United States outpost in Alaska and flagged to the White House situation room, heading for what everyone learns is its objective: the heart of Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while participating in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re made to question where this two-hour film can possibly go once the countdown clock hits zero.

The outcome – and this is where the letdowns start – is back to the beginning: the film later moves between the angles of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ general, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the introduction only partially revealed. Structurally, the film can’t develop: it’s a two-hour movie with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel again and again, every iteration adding on moot procedural points while inching everyone nearer the anticipated detonation. Prior Bigelow films had a tight grip on cause-and-effect; her best films 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 narrative captivates at the precise instant the film fades to black. The figures are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for separate causes.

Visual and Thematic Shortcomings

While the situation cycles in diminishing returns, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve plenty of opportunity to reflect on the deleterious effect streaming budgets has had on the visual style of Hollywood productions. Even on the large screen, Dynamite seemed dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing evoking 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases reusing familiar locations, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker disappears, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that initial segment as potentially another of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, exits prematurely, so yet again it’s left to a collection of stern males to try to stop doomsday. The passion Bigelow contributed to her pulpier breakthrough films disappears alongside her; 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 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 considered inadequate; becoming rigid and almost petrifying as it progresses, it’s not unexpected the film should have been surpassed by recent, recontextualising events. What this story takes for granted is that those holding roles of command would be skilled experts, conscientious to the core and that the greatest danger to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from an origin beyond the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their moment, Dynamite – the first of this director’s latest projects to fall somewhere between oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime struggling aimlessly behind the curve. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the rogue missile first is detected, the nation Bigelow’s film portrays has been destroyed utterly.