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Bestowed upon an elite few, the mantle of Esteemed Director can serve as an honor and a weight. On the beneficial side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this prism, film scholars may feel compelled to defend even their least successful efforts. (The reasoning is that a disappointing film by a Noted Film-maker is still superior to the best work of a jobbing hack.) One downside is that such accolades can limit a creative to a constrained space, pursuing exclusively material suitable for a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the disappointment when a project fails to ignite is significantly amplified. A notable test case has made its way to Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if texts from cinephile pals are any guide – seems assured of only one award this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.

Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey

To determine why the film has underwhelmed so, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow built her reputation with a succession of broad, agile genre films: biker flick The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the timeless action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A sharper insight of her artistic path came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an intense near-future drama, influenced by the Rodney King case, which also doubled as a moral story about the perils of abandoning reality to seek shelter in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more alert 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 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 heated debate with the country’s long history of racism.

It's easy to see why a film-maker on this trajectory might be interested in Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who scripted Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the platform would vigorously back a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One concept for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)

High Points and Low Points

Dynamite is at its strongest early on, depicting in near real-time the 19 minutes in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by unknown parties is spotted on the radars of a American military installation in Alaska and alerted to the presidential command center, en route towards what everyone learns is its target: the heart of Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while participating in an compelling countdown strategy: we’re set to wondering where this full-length production can possibly head once the chronometer hits zero.

The outcome – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is back to the beginning: the film later moves between the perspectives of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ military officer, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene briefly seen or mentioned. In terms of construction, the film fails to progress: it’s a lengthy film with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section repeatedly, each pass layering on contested bureaucratic steps while edging everybody closer the dreaded big bang. Previous Bigelow films had a strong control on action and consequence; her most successful works as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the inciting incident is also the endgame; the story becomes engaging at the precise instant the film concludes. The characters are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for separate causes.

Stylistic and Conceptual Issues

While the plot revolves in shrinking loops, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve plenty of opportunity to reflect on the negative impact platform financing has had on the look of American cinema. Even on the big screen, Dynamite struck the eye as flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming recalling 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases employing identical backdrops, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that initial segment as potentially another of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, clocks off early, so yet again it’s the responsibility of a group of serious male figures to try to stop doomsday. The passion Bigelow contributed to her grittier initial successes disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the director felt she had to restrain her risk-taking, but a script this talky required some balancing visual flair.

The Core Fear and Final Analysis

The anxiety A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t global eradication, but a filmmaker's fear of being thought unworthy; stiffening and virtually solidifying as it unfolds, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been overtaken by contemporary, reframing developments. What this screenplay assumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be skilled experts, fundamentally diligent and that the largest risk to Chicago in late 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where previous Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their moment, Dynamite – the first of this director’s latest projects to fall somewhere between oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours scrabbling around hopelessly behind the curve. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the stray rocket first is detected, the America Bigelow’s film describes has been destroyed utterly.