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Bestowed upon a select group, the designation of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the positive side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this perspective, film scholars may feel pressured to make excuses for even their least successful efforts. (The logic is that a disappointing film by a Renowned Director is still better than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One downside is that such titles can limit a creative to a tight creative box, seeking out material befitting a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the disappointment when a project falls flat is significantly amplified. A notable example has recently arrived on Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if texts from cinephile pals are any indication – seems destined for only one honor this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.

Retracing the Director's Steps

To understand why the film has failed to impress, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow earned her laurels with a series of broad, agile genre films: biker flick The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the enduring Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A sharper insight of her creative evolution came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an gripping near-future drama, influenced by the Rodney King incident, which also functioned as a warning tale about the risks of escaping from the real world to seek shelter in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more alert to this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her homeland – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty broached America’s recent military engagements in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the summer of Charlottesville, entered into a heated debate with the country’s extended past of racism.

One can appreciate why a artist following this path might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who scripted Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the streamer would strongly support a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One idea for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)

High Points and Low Points

Dynamite is at its most effective early on, describing in something like real time the 19 minutes in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific region by mysterious forces is spotted on the radars of a US army base in Alaska and alerted to the White House situation room, en route towards what everyone learns is its objective: central Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while participating in an intriguing temporal brinkmanship: we’re left pondering where this feature-length movie can possibly proceed once the chronometer hits 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 higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the introduction only partially revealed. In terms of construction, the film can’t develop: it’s a lengthy film with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to revisit that first reel repeatedly, every iteration adding on debated technical details while moving all parties toward the anticipated detonation. Previous Bigelow films had a firm hold on cause-and-effect; her most successful works as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the inciting incident is also the concluding action; the narrative captivates at the very second the film fades to black. The figures are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.

Aesthetic and Narrative Flaws

While the plot revolves in shrinking loops, like a bleak repetitive cycle, we’ve plenty of opportunity to consider the deleterious effect platform financing has had on the look of U.S. films. Even on the large screen, Dynamite seemed flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork evoking 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases reusing familiar locations, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker disappears, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that opening reel as potentially another of this director’s strong female professionals, clocks off early, so yet again it’s up to a collection of stern males to try to avert global catastrophe. The energy Bigelow brought to her more genre-oriented early hits disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the artist felt she had to rein in her risk-taking, but a script this talky required some offsetting dramatic intensity.

Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts

The fear A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, 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 surpassed by current, reshaping incidents. What this screenplay presumes is that those holding roles of command would be qualified professionals, fundamentally diligent and that the biggest threat to Chicago in late 2025 would come from an origin beyond the White House. Where previous Bigelow films felt like intensely involved commentaries on their moment, 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 outdated. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the rogue missile first is detected, the nation Bigelow’s film portrays has been shattered completely.