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Bestowed upon an elite few, the designation of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the beneficial side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an celebrated director through this perspective, auteurist critics may feel compelled to justify even their least successful efforts. (The reasoning is that a subpar film by a Noted Film-maker is still superior to the best work of a commercial director.) One disadvantage is that such honorifics can limit a creative to a very narrow courtyard, searching only for material suitable for a Noted Film-maker; another is that the dismay when a project fails to ignite is significantly amplified. A notable example has made its way to Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if texts from cinephile pals are any indication – seems nailed on for only one honor this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.

Examining Bigelow's Career Path

To determine why the film has underwhelmed so, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow established her acclaim with a succession of broad, agile genre films: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the enduring Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A sharper insight of her direction of travel came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an electrifying sci-fi suspense story, informed by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also served as a cautionary fable about the perils of escaping from the real world to seek shelter in the simulated environment. (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 the United States – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled America’s recent military engagements 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.

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 wrote Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the platform would vigorously back a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One pitch for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)

High Points and Low Points

Dynamite is at its strongest early on, depicting in near real-time the brief period in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific by mysterious forces is detected by sensors of a United States outpost in Alaska and alerted to the White House situation room, en route towards what everyone learns is its target: central Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim briskly accelerate the stakes while engaging in an compelling countdown strategy: we’re left pondering where this two-hour film can possibly proceed once the chronometer expires.

The outcome – and here’s where the disappointments begin – is a revisit of the opening: the film then shifts between the viewpoints of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the prologue only partially revealed. In terms of construction, the film fails to progress: it’s a two-hour movie with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment again and again, each repetition adding on debated technical details while edging everybody closer the anticipated detonation. Previous Bigelow films had a strong control on cause-and-effect; her most successful works as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the triggering event is also the endgame; the drama gets interesting at the precise instant the film fades to black. The characters are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.

Visual and Thematic Shortcomings

While the scenario spins in ever decreasing circles, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve ample time to reflect on the deleterious effect platform financing has had on the look of American cinema. Even on the big screen, Dynamite seemed uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases recycling the same sets, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director fades away, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that beginning part as perhaps an additional of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, leaves the story too soon, so again it’s up to a group of serious male figures to try to prevent the world’s end. The energy Bigelow brought to her pulpier breakthrough films is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the director felt she had to rein in her experimental tendencies, but a script this talky required some offsetting dramatic intensity.

Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment

The anxiety A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a director’s terror of being deemed insufficient; tensing up and almost petrifying as it unfolds, it’s understandable the film should have been surpassed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this screenplay takes for granted is that those holding roles of command would be skilled experts, fundamentally diligent and that the largest risk to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their era, Dynamite – the first of this director’s newer films to fall in a gray area of oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends two listless hours struggling aimlessly behind the curve. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the stray rocket first appears on sensors, the America Bigelow’s film describes has been blown to smithereens.