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Bestowed upon a select group, the mantle of Esteemed Director can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the favorable side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this perspective, film scholars may feel compelled to defend even their poorest efforts. (The rationale is that a disappointing film by a Noted Film-maker is still better than the best work of a commercial director.) One disadvantage is that such honorifics can limit a creative to a tight creative box, 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 high-profile test case has just reached Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if messages from film buff friends are any measure – seems nailed on for only one recognition this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.

Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey

To determine why the film has underwhelmed so, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow established her acclaim with a series of expansive, limber genre pics: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the enduring action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. Clearer indication of her artistic path came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an electrifying sci-fi suspense story, informed by the Rodney King case, which also functioned as a warning tale about the perils of abandoning reality to find refuge in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more alert 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 fame expanding, 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 fractious conversation with the country’s long history of racism.

It's easy to see why a film-maker on this trajectory might be attracted to 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 service would strongly support a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One concept for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)

What Works and What Doesn't

Dynamite is at its most effective early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the 19 minutes in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific region by unidentified actors is picked up on screens of a US army base in Alaska and reported to the executive briefing area, traveling to what everyone learns is its destination: central Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while participating in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re set to wondering where this two-hour film can possibly go once the chronometer reaches zero.

The response – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is a return to the start: the film then shifts between the angles of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ general, secretary of defence Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the introduction briefly seen or mentioned. Structurally, the film is unable to advance: it’s a lengthy film with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel multiple times, every iteration layering on contested bureaucratic steps while moving all parties toward the anticipated detonation. Prior Bigelow films had a strong control on action and consequence; her best films as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the triggering event is also the endgame; the narrative captivates at the very second the film fades to black. The personas are left wondering: “Is this all?” 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 platform financing has had on the visual style of U.S. films. Even on the big screen, Dynamite appeared as flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing evoking 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings reusing familiar locations, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that opening reel as perhaps an additional of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, clocks off early, so once more it’s up to a group of serious male figures to try to avert global catastrophe. The verve Bigelow brought to her grittier initial successes disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the film-maker felt she had to restrain her bold choices, but a script this verbose required some balancing visual flair.

Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts

The dread A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a director’s terror of being considered inadequate; stiffening and practically fossilising as it unfolds, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been eclipsed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this script takes for granted is that those holding roles of command would be trained specialists, conscientious to the core and that the greatest danger to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where previous Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their era, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s latest projects to fall somewhere between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours scrabbling around hopelessly behind the curve. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the rogue missile first is detected, the America Bigelow’s film depicts has been blown to smithereens.