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Bestowed upon a select group, the title of Noted Film-maker can serve as an honor and a weight. On the beneficial side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this perspective, cinema analysts may feel compelled to defend even their weakest efforts. (The logic is that a disappointing film by a Noted Film-maker is still more valuable than the best work of a routine filmmaker.) One downside is that such accolades can restrict a creative to a very narrow courtyard, pursuing exclusively material worthy of a Esteemed Director; another is that the frustration when a project falls flat is significantly amplified. A notable instance has recently arrived on Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if texts from cinephile pals are any guide – seems destined for only one recognition this season: that for Biggest Letdown.

Retracing the Director's Steps

To understand why the film has underwhelmed so, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow established her acclaim with a run of broad, agile genre films: biker flick The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the classic Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A sharper insight of her direction of travel came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an intense future-now thriller, influenced by the Rodney King case, which also served as a moral story about the risks of escaping from the real world to seek shelter in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, now preparing the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her homeland – was pushed into a reactive stance. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed America’s contemporary conflicts in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the summer of Charlottesville, entered into a heated debate with the country’s deep-seated legacy of racism.

It's easy to see why a artist following this path might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who wrote Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the service would vigorously back a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One concept for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)

What Works and What Doesn't

Dynamite is at its most effective early on, depicting in near real-time the brief period in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific region by unidentified actors is spotted on the radars of a United States outpost in Alaska and reported to the presidential command center, heading for what everyone learns is its destination: central Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while engaging in an intriguing temporal brinkmanship: we’re made to question where this feature-length movie can possibly head once the chronometer reaches zero.

The outcome – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is a return to the start: the film subsequently shuffles between the angles of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the opening scene glimpsed or heard only in passing. Structurally, the film can’t develop: it’s a extended runtime with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section repeatedly, each repetition layering on debated technical details while inching everyone nearer the anticipated detonation. Prior Bigelow films had a firm hold on action and consequence; her best films as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the inciting incident is also the final play; the narrative captivates at the very second the film concludes. The personas are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for different reasons.

Visual and Thematic Shortcomings

While the scenario cycles in diminishing returns, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve sufficient moments to ponder the negative impact Netflix money has had on the aesthetic of Hollywood productions. Even on the big screen, Dynamite seemed uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming evoking 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content reusing familiar locations, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that beginning part as potentially another of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, clocks off early, so yet again it’s left to a group of serious male figures to try to prevent the world’s end. The passion Bigelow infused into her pulpier breakthrough films vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the director felt she had to restrain her experimental tendencies, but a script this verbose required some compensatory pyrotechnics.

Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts

The fear A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a director’s terror of being thought unworthy; stiffening and virtually solidifying as it progresses, it’s understandable the film should have been eclipsed by current, reshaping incidents. What this script assumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be qualified professionals, fundamentally diligent and that the greatest danger to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from a location outside of 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 pair of lethargic hours struggling aimlessly out of touch. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the unauthorized projectile first appears on sensors, the America Bigelow’s film depicts has been destroyed utterly.