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Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the title of Noted Film-maker can serve as both a crown and a burden. 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 defend even their least successful efforts. (The rationale is that a disappointing film by a Noted Film-maker is still more valuable than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One downside is that such titles can confine a creative to a very narrow courtyard, searching only for material worthy of a Noted Film-maker; another is that the dismay when a project falls flat is significantly amplified. A high-profile example has made its way to Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if texts from cinephile pals are any measure – seems destined for only one honor this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.

Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey

To determine why the film has disappointed many, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow earned her laurels with a run of versatile and dynamic movies: biker flick The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the timeless action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A sharper insight of her artistic path came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an intense sci-fi suspense story, shaped by the Rodney King case, which also functioned as a warning tale about the perils of rejecting actuality to find refuge in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her screenwriter/ex-husband 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 compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled America’s contemporary conflicts in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the summer of Charlottesville, entered into a contentious dialogue with the country’s extended past of racism.

It's easy to see why a film-maker on this trajectory might be drawn towards Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who wrote Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the streamer would enthusiastically stump for a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One pitch for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)

The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses

Dynamite is at its strongest early on, describing in something like real time the 19 minutes in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific by unknown parties is picked up on screens of a US army base in Alaska and flagged to the White House situation room, en route towards what everyone learns is its target: the heart of Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while participating in an compelling countdown strategy: we’re set to wondering where this two-hour film can possibly go once the timer reaches zero.

The response – and this is where the letdowns start – is a revisit of the opening: 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 prologue briefly seen or mentioned. In terms of construction, the film fails to progress: it’s a lengthy film with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel multiple times, each pass layering on debated technical details while edging everybody closer the feared explosion. Prior Bigelow films had a strong control on stimulus and response; her finest achievements as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the catalytic moment is also the concluding action; the story becomes engaging at the very second the film concludes. The figures are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.

Visual and Thematic Shortcomings

While the plot cycles in diminishing returns, like a bleak repetitive cycle, we’ve plenty of opportunity to consider the negative impact streaming budgets has had on the look of Hollywood productions. Even on the large screen, Dynamite struck the eye as flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming evoking 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content recycling the same sets, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that initial segment as potentially another of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, exits prematurely, so once more it’s the responsibility of a group of serious male figures to try to prevent the world’s end. The passion Bigelow infused into her grittier initial successes vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the film-maker felt she had to restrain her risk-taking, but a script this talky required some balancing visual flair.

Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts

The anxiety A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a artist's anxiety of being deemed insufficient; tensing up and virtually solidifying as it unfolds, it’s not unexpected the film should have been overtaken by recent, recontextualising events. What this story takes for granted is that those holding roles of command would be trained specialists, deeply responsible and that the largest risk to Chicago in late 2025 would come from an origin beyond the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their time, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s latest projects to fall in a gray area of neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends a dull two-hour runtime struggling aimlessly outdated. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the unauthorized projectile first appears on sensors, the America Bigelow’s film describes has been destroyed utterly.