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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 positive side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this perspective, auteurist critics may feel obliged to justify even their least successful efforts. (The reasoning is that a subpar film by a Prestigious Auteur is still superior to the best work of a routine filmmaker.) One downside is that such accolades can restrict a creative to a constrained space, seeking out material worthy of a Noted Film-maker; another is that the dismay when a project fails to ignite is all the greater. A notable example has recently arrived on Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if messages from film buff friends are any measure – seems assured of only one award this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.

Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey

To determine why the film has underwhelmed so, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow established her acclaim with a run of broad, agile genre films: biker flick The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the classic Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A more definite sign of her creative evolution came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an intense near-future drama, influenced by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also served as a moral story about the dangers of escaping from the real world to take cover in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her the United States – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed 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 extended past of racism.

You can understand why a film-maker on this trajectory might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – penned 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 nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One idea for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)

What Works and What Doesn't

Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, depicting in near real-time the 19 minutes in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific region by unidentified actors is picked up on screens of a United States outpost in Alaska and reported to the White House situation room, en route towards what everyone learns is its objective: central Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while participating in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re made to question where this feature-length movie can possibly go once the chronometer expires.

The outcome – and this is where the letdowns start – is a revisit of the opening: the film later moves between the perspectives of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the introduction only partially revealed. Structurally, the film fails to progress: it’s a two-hour movie with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section again and again, every iteration adding on contested bureaucratic steps while inching everyone nearer the feared explosion. Prior Bigelow films had a tight grip on action and consequence; her most successful works as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the catalytic moment is also the endgame; the story becomes engaging at the very second the film ends. The figures are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.

Visual and Thematic Shortcomings

While the scenario revolves in shrinking loops, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve ample time to reflect on the harmful influence platform financing has had on the visual style of U.S. films. Even on the large screen, Dynamite appeared as uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content reusing familiar locations, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker disappears, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that beginning part as possibly one more of this director’s strong female professionals, clocks off early, so again it’s up to a collection of stern males to try to prevent the world’s end. The passion Bigelow contributed to her pulpier breakthrough films disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the artist felt she had to curb her experimental tendencies, but a script this verbose required some offsetting dramatic intensity.

Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment

The dread A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a filmmaker's fear of being thought unworthy; becoming rigid and almost petrifying as it goes along, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been surpassed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this script assumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be trained specialists, deeply responsible and that the greatest danger to Chicago in late 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their time, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s newer films to fall somewhere between afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime struggling aimlessly outdated. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the rogue missile first is detected, the America Bigelow’s film depicts has been destroyed utterly.