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Bestowed upon a select group, the mantle of Noted Film-maker 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 ennobled director through this perspective, film scholars may feel compelled to make excuses for even their least successful efforts. (The rationale is that a lackluster film by a Prestigious Auteur is still more valuable than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One downside is that such honorifics can confine a creative to a constrained space, pursuing exclusively material worthy of a Noted Film-maker; another is that the frustration when a project doesn't spark is significantly amplified. A prominent example has just reached Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if feedback from movie enthusiasts are any indication – seems nailed on for only one award this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.

Retracing the Director's Steps

To ascertain the reasons the film has underwhelmed so, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow built her reputation with a series of expansive, limber genre pics: biker flick The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the enduring Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A sharper insight of her artistic path came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an electrifying future-now thriller, influenced by the Rodney King case, which also functioned as a moral story about the dangers of abandoning reality to take cover in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, now preparing the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her native country – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed 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 deep-seated legacy of racism.

It's easy to see why a film-maker on this trajectory might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who penned Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the platform would vigorously back a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One pitch for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)

High Points and Low Points

Dynamite is at its strongest early on, depicting in near real-time the short interval in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by mysterious forces is detected by sensors of a US army base in Alaska and alerted to the White House situation room, traveling to what everyone learns is its objective: downtown Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while undertaking an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re left pondering where this two-hour film can possibly go once the chronometer expires.

The answer – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is a return to the start: the film then shifts between the viewpoints of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the opening scene briefly seen or mentioned. Structurally, the film can’t develop: it’s a lengthy film with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section repeatedly, every iteration adding on debated technical details while inching everyone nearer the feared explosion. Earlier Bigelow films had a strong control on action and consequence; her most successful works as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the catalytic moment is also the concluding action; the story becomes engaging at the exact moment the film ends. The characters are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for separate causes.

Stylistic and Conceptual Issues

While the scenario spins in ever decreasing circles, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve ample time to reflect on the harmful influence streaming budgets has had on the visual style of American cinema. 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 reusing familiar locations, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director disappears, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that initial segment as potentially another of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, leaves the story too soon, so again it’s the responsibility of a group of serious male figures to try to prevent the world’s end. The verve Bigelow brought to her grittier initial successes disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the director felt she had to rein in her bold choices, but a script this verbose required some offsetting dramatic intensity.

Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment

The anxiety A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a director’s terror of being deemed insufficient; stiffening and practically fossilising as it progresses, it’s not unexpected the film should have been eclipsed by recent, recontextualising events. What this story takes for granted is that those in charge of critical decisions would be trained specialists, deeply responsible and that the greatest danger to Chicago in the latter part of 2025 would come from some place other than 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 not tense for a reason: even before the rogue missile first appears on sensors, the America Bigelow’s film portrays has been shattered completely.