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Bestowed upon an elite few, the title of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as an honor and a weight. On the positive side, it can offer protection: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this perspective, auteurist critics may feel obliged to defend even their poorest efforts. (The reasoning is that a lackluster film by a Noted Film-maker is still superior to the best work of a commercial director.) One drawback is that such accolades can confine a creative to a tight creative box, pursuing exclusively material suitable for a Noted Film-maker; another is that the disappointment when a project falls flat is all the greater. A prominent instance has made its way to Netflix in the latest from Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if feedback from movie enthusiasts are any guide – seems assured of only one recognition this season: that for Biggest Letdown.

Retracing the Director's Steps

To understand why the film has disappointed many, we must examine the filmmaker's trajectory. Bigelow built her reputation with a series of versatile and dynamic movies: motorcycle drama The Loveless, the sprawling undead story Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the classic Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. Clearer indication of her creative evolution came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an intense near-future drama, shaped by the Rodney King case, which also functioned as a cautionary fable about the risks of abandoning reality to find refuge in the virtual realm. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, at work on the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her the United States – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled America’s contemporary conflicts 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 director with this background might be interested in Dynamite’s script – written by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who scripted Netflix’s new project featuring De Niro Zero Day – and why the service would vigorously back a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One pitch for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)

What Works and What Doesn't

Dynamite is at its most effective early on, depicting in near real-time the short interval in which a projectile fired somewhere in the Pacific by unidentified actors is detected by sensors of a American military installation in Alaska and alerted to the White House situation room, heading for what everyone learns is its target: central Chicago. In this first section, Bigelow and Oppenheim rapidly increase the drama while engaging in an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re left pondering where this full-length production can possibly proceed once the chronometer reaches zero.

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, secretary of defence Jared Harris and commander-in-chief Idris Elba) the opening scene briefly seen or mentioned. In terms of construction, the film is unable to advance: it’s a two-hour movie with a minimal narrative arc, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section again and again, each pass trowelling on contested bureaucratic steps while moving all parties toward the feared explosion. Prior Bigelow films had a strong control on action and consequence; her best films as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the inciting incident is also the final play; the narrative captivates at the precise instant the film fades to black. The personas are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for different reasons.

Visual and Thematic Shortcomings

While the situation revolves in shrinking loops, like a bleak repetitive cycle, we’ve plenty of opportunity to reflect on the harmful influence Netflix money has had on the visual style of U.S. films. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite seemed uninspired and typical, Barry Ackroyd’s hasty mobile filming evoking 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases recycling the same sets, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker fades away, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that opening reel as possibly one more of this director’s strong female professionals, leaves the story too soon, so once more it’s left to a group of serious male figures to try to avert global catastrophe. The energy Bigelow brought to her grittier initial successes is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the director felt she had to rein in her risk-taking, but a script this dialogue-heavy required some balancing visual flair.

Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts

The dread A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t global eradication, but a director’s terror of being thought unworthy; stiffening and almost petrifying as it unfolds, it’s understandable the film should have been surpassed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this script assumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be qualified professionals, deeply responsible and that the biggest threat to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their time, Dynamite – the first of this director’s newer films to fall somewhere between oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends two listless hours clawing futilely behind the curve. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the unauthorized projectile first registers on a radar, the United States Bigelow’s film portrays has been shattered completely.