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Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the title 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 celebrated director through this prism, cinema analysts may feel pressured to make excuses for even their weakest efforts. (The logic is that a lackluster film by a Prestigious Auteur is still more valuable than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One drawback is that such titles can restrict a creative to a very narrow courtyard, pursuing exclusively material suitable for a Esteemed Director; another is that the dismay when a project doesn't spark is all the greater. A prominent instance has made its way to Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if messages from film buff friends are any indication – seems assured of only one honor this season: that for Biggest Letdown.

Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey

To ascertain the reasons the film has disappointed many, we must look back at Bigelow's career. Bigelow built her reputation with a run of versatile and dynamic movies: biker flick The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the classic Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. Clearer indication of her artistic path came with the underrated mid-90s release Strange Days, an intense future-now thriller, influenced by the Rodney King incident, which also doubled as a cautionary fable about the perils of rejecting actuality to seek shelter in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more alert to this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet post-2001, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her homeland – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty addressed America’s contemporary conflicts in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, 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 – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who penned Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the streamer would vigorously back a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One concept for the new film: a contemporary version of Oppenheimer?)

What Works and What Doesn't

Dynamite is at its strongest early on, describing in something like real time the brief period in which a missile launched somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by mysterious forces is picked up on screens of a US army base in Alaska and reported to the executive briefing area, heading for what everyone learns is its destination: downtown Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim briskly accelerate the stakes while engaging in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re made to question where this feature-length movie can possibly go once the timer hits zero.

The answer – and this is where the letdowns start – is back to the beginning: the film later moves between the viewpoints of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ general, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene glimpsed or heard only in passing. In terms of construction, the film is unable to advance: it’s a two-hour movie with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment again and again, every iteration layering on debated technical details while inching everyone nearer the anticipated detonation. Earlier Bigelow films had a firm hold on cause-and-effect; her best films 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 narrative captivates at the exact moment the film ends. The characters are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for different reasons.

Stylistic and Conceptual Issues

While the scenario spins in ever decreasing circles, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve sufficient moments to reflect on the deleterious effect streaming budgets has had on the visual style of American cinema. Even on the large screen, Dynamite appeared as dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming evoking 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings reusing familiar locations, up to and including Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist fades away, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that initial segment as potentially another of this director’s tough-minded working women, exits prematurely, so yet again it’s up to a group of serious male figures to try to stop doomsday. The passion Bigelow infused into her more genre-oriented early hits is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the film-maker felt she had to rein in her risk-taking, but a script this verbose required some balancing visual flair.

Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts

The anxiety A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a director’s terror of being deemed insufficient; becoming rigid and almost petrifying as it goes along, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been eclipsed by recent, recontextualising events. What this screenplay takes for granted is that those occupying positions of operational authority would be qualified professionals, deeply responsible 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 intensely involved commentaries on their era, Dynamite – the first 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 lacking in drama by design: even before the rogue missile first is detected, the United States Bigelow’s film portrays has been shattered completely.