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Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the title of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as an honor and a weight. On the favorable side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this prism, auteurist critics may feel compelled to justify even their weakest efforts. (The rationale is that a lackluster film by a Renowned Director is still superior to the best work of a routine filmmaker.) One downside is that such honorifics can confine a creative to a constrained space, seeking out material worthy of a Noted Film-maker; another is that the frustration when a project doesn't spark is significantly amplified. A notable instance has recently arrived on Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if messages from film buff friends are any indication – seems nailed on for only one recognition this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.

Retracing the Director's Steps

To understand why the film has failed to impress, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow established her acclaim with a succession of versatile and dynamic movies: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the classic action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. A more definite sign of her artistic path came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an gripping future-now thriller, influenced by the events surrounding Rodney King, which also served as a cautionary fable about the dangers of abandoning reality to seek shelter in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her screenwriter/ex-husband James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet post-2001, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her native country – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty broached America’s then-recent misadventures 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 – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who wrote Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the streamer would vigorously back a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One idea for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)

The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses

Dynamite is at its most effective early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the brief period in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific by unidentified actors is detected by sensors of a US army base in Alaska and flagged to the presidential command center, heading for what everyone learns is its objective: central Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while participating in an intriguing temporal brinkmanship: we’re left pondering where this feature-length movie can possibly proceed once the timer reaches zero.

The answer – and this is where the letdowns start – is a revisit of the opening: the film subsequently shuffles between the viewpoints of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ military officer, secretary of defence 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 extended runtime with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment multiple times, each pass adding on contested bureaucratic steps while inching everyone nearer the dreaded big bang. Previous Bigelow films had a tight grip on action and consequence; her best films as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were definitionally all consequence. But here, the triggering event is also the final play; the drama gets interesting at the very second the film fades to black. The personas are left wondering: “Is this all?” 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 plenty of opportunity to ponder the deleterious effect Netflix money has had on the visual style of American cinema. Even on the big screen, Dynamite seemed flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings reusing familiar locations, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, outlined in that beginning part as potentially another of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, clocks off early, so yet again it’s up to a cabal of frowning men to try to stop doomsday. The energy Bigelow contributed to her pulpier breakthrough films disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the director felt she had to curb her risk-taking, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some compensatory pyrotechnics.

Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts

The anxiety A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a director’s terror of being considered inadequate; stiffening and virtually solidifying as it unfolds, it’s not unexpected the film should have been overtaken by recent, recontextualising events. What this script presumes 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 a location outside of the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like fiercely engaged reflections on their moment, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s recent works to fall in a gray area of neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends two listless hours scrabbling around hopelessly out of touch. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the stray rocket first registers on a radar, the nation Bigelow’s film portrays has been shattered completely.