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Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the mantle of Esteemed Director can serve as an honor and a weight. On the favorable side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an celebrated director through this lens, cinema analysts may feel compelled to make excuses for even their weakest efforts. (The rationale is that a lackluster film by a Prestigious Auteur is still superior to the best work of a jobbing hack.) One downside is that such honorifics can confine a creative to a constrained space, seeking out material suitable for a Esteemed Director; another is that the disappointment when a project fails to ignite is even more pronounced. A notable instance has recently arrived on Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if texts from cinephile pals are any measure – seems nailed on for only one honor this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.

Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey

To understand why the film has disappointed many, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow established her acclaim with a succession of expansive, limber genre pics: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the classic action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A more definite sign of her direction of travel came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an gripping sci-fi suspense story, informed by the Rodney King case, which also functioned as a warning tale about the perils of rejecting actuality to find refuge in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more alert to this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, now preparing the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her the United States – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled America’s then-recent misadventures in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the period following the Charlottesville events, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s extended past of racism.

One can appreciate why a director with this background might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who wrote Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the streamer would vigorously back a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One pitch for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)

High Points and Low Points

Dynamite is at its most effective early on, describing in something like real time the short interval in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific region by mysterious forces is picked up on screens of a American military installation in Alaska and reported to the executive briefing area, heading for what everyone learns is its target: downtown Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while undertaking an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re left pondering where this full-length production can possibly proceed once the timer expires.

The answer – and this is where the letdowns start – is back to the beginning: the film then shifts between the viewpoints of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene glimpsed or heard only in passing. In terms of construction, the film is unable to advance: it’s a two-hour movie with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section multiple times, each repetition trowelling on debated technical details while inching everyone nearer the anticipated detonation. Earlier Bigelow films had a tight grip on action and consequence; her finest achievements as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the catalytic moment is also the endgame; the drama gets interesting at the exact moment the film concludes. The figures are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for separate causes.

Stylistic and Conceptual Issues

While the situation spins in ever decreasing circles, like a bleak repetitive cycle, we’ve plenty of opportunity to reflect on the deleterious effect Netflix money has had on the aesthetic of Hollywood productions. Even on the big screen, Dynamite struck the eye as flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content employing identical backdrops, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that beginning part as possibly one more of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, exits prematurely, so again it’s the responsibility of a group of serious male figures to try to stop doomsday. The energy Bigelow infused into her more genre-oriented early hits is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the artist felt she had to restrain her risk-taking, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some balancing visual flair.

The Core Fear and Final Analysis

The dread A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t global eradication, but a filmmaker's fear of being considered inadequate; stiffening and almost petrifying as it goes along, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been surpassed by recent, recontextualising events. What this script presumes 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 earlier Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their time, Dynamite – the first of this director’s recent works to fall in the space between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours clawing futilely out of touch. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the rogue missile first registers on a radar, the United States Bigelow’s film portrays has been blown to smithereens.