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Bestowed upon an elite few, the mantle of Esteemed Director can serve as an honor and a weight. On the beneficial side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this perspective, cinema analysts may feel compelled to make excuses for even their least successful efforts. (The reasoning is that a subpar film by a Noted Film-maker is still better than the best work of a commercial director.) One disadvantage is that such accolades can restrict a creative to a very narrow courtyard, seeking out material worthy of a Esteemed Director; another is that the disappointment when a project doesn't spark is even more pronounced. A notable test case has recently arrived on Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if feedback from movie enthusiasts are any measure – seems nailed on for only one award this season: that for Biggest Letdown.

Examining Bigelow's Career Path

To understand why the film has underwhelmed so, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow established her acclaim with a series of expansive, limber genre pics: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the timeless action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A sharper insight of her direction of travel came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an intense sci-fi suspense story, shaped by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also functioned as a moral story about the dangers of rejecting actuality to take cover in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her homeland – 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 period following the Charlottesville events, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s deep-seated legacy of racism.

One can appreciate why a artist following this path might be interested in Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who penned Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the streamer would enthusiastically stump for a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep. (One concept for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)

The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses

Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, describing in something like real time the brief period in which a missile launched 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, heading for what everyone learns is its objective: central Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while undertaking an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re made to question where this feature-length movie can possibly proceed once the timer hits zero.

The response – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is a revisit of the opening: the film then shifts between the perspectives of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ military officer, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the prologue glimpsed or heard only in passing. From a narrative standpoint, the film can’t develop: it’s a two-hour movie with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section repeatedly, each repetition layering on moot procedural points while inching everyone nearer the dreaded big bang. Earlier Bigelow films had a tight grip on action and consequence; her best films as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the triggering event is also the endgame; the narrative captivates at the exact moment the film concludes. The figures are left wondering: “Is this all?” We are, too, for separate causes.

Visual and Thematic Shortcomings

While the scenario revolves in shrinking loops, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve plenty of opportunity to consider the deleterious effect streaming budgets has had on the look of U.S. films. Even on the big screen, Dynamite seemed flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content employing identical backdrops, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director fades away, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that beginning part as potentially another of this director’s tough-minded working women, clocks off early, so again it’s up to a cabal of frowning men to try to avert global catastrophe. The passion Bigelow contributed to her grittier initial successes vanishes with her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the director felt she had to rein in her risk-taking, but a script this verbose required some balancing visual flair.

Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment

The fear A House of Dynamite most strongly conjures, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a director’s terror of being considered inadequate; becoming rigid and virtually solidifying as it unfolds, it’s not unexpected the film should have been surpassed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this screenplay presumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be trained specialists, fundamentally diligent and that the greatest danger to Chicago in late 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where previous Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their era, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s newer films to fall in the space between oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours struggling aimlessly behind the curve. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the rogue missile first appears on sensors, the United States Bigelow’s film portrays has been destroyed utterly.