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Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the title of Noted Film-maker can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the beneficial side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an distinguished director through this prism, cinema analysts may feel compelled to make excuses for even their poorest efforts. (The reasoning is that a disappointing film by a Renowned Director is still superior to the best work of a routine filmmaker.) 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 frustration when a project doesn't spark is all the greater. A prominent instance has made its way to Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if messages from film buff friends are any guide – seems nailed on for only one recognition this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.

Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey

To understand why the film has failed to impress, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow built her reputation with a succession of broad, agile genre films: biker flick The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the classic Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A sharper insight of her direction of travel came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an gripping near-future drama, shaped by the Rodney King incident, which also doubled as a cautionary fable about the perils of escaping from the real world to take cover in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her native country – 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 extended past of racism.

You can understand why a film-maker on this trajectory might be interested in Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who wrote Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the service would vigorously back a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One pitch for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)

What Works and What Doesn't

Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, describing in something like real time the brief period in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific region by mysterious forces is spotted on the radars of a United States outpost in Alaska and flagged to the White House situation room, en route towards what everyone learns is its target: downtown Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while participating in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re left pondering where this two-hour film can possibly proceed once the timer expires.

The outcome – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is a return to the start: the film then shifts between the viewpoints of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the opening scene glimpsed or heard only in passing. Structurally, 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 again and again, every iteration adding on moot procedural points while inching everyone nearer the feared explosion. Previous Bigelow films had a tight grip on cause-and-effect; her finest achievements as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the triggering event is also the endgame; the story becomes engaging at the precise instant the film fades to black. The figures are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.

Visual and Thematic Shortcomings

While the plot cycles in diminishing returns, like a bleak repetitive cycle, we’ve sufficient moments to consider the negative impact streaming budgets has had on the visual style of U.S. films. Even on the big screen, Dynamite struck the eye as flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming recalling 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases reusing familiar locations, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director fades away, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that opening reel as potentially another of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, clocks off early, so once more it’s up to a collection of stern males to try to stop doomsday. The verve Bigelow brought to her grittier initial successes is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the film-maker felt she had to restrain her bold choices, but a script this talky required some balancing visual flair.

The Core Fear and Final Analysis

The dread A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t global eradication, but a filmmaker's fear of being considered inadequate; tensing up and virtually solidifying as it progresses, it’s not unexpected the film should have been surpassed by recent, recontextualising events. What this screenplay assumes is that those occupying positions of operational authority would be trained specialists, deeply responsible and that the greatest danger to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their era, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s latest projects to fall in a gray area of oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends two listless hours scrabbling around hopelessly behind the curve. 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.