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Bestowed upon an elite few, the mantle of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as both a crown and a burden. On the positive side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this perspective, auteurist critics may feel pressured to make excuses for even their weakest efforts. (The reasoning is that a subpar film by a Prestigious Auteur is still better than the best work of a jobbing hack.) One drawback is that such honorifics can restrict a creative to a very narrow courtyard, seeking out material suitable for a Acclaimed Auteur; another is that the frustration when a project fails to ignite is even more pronounced. A prominent test case has recently arrived on Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a minor effort that – if texts from cinephile pals are any guide – seems destined for only one award this season: that for Most Notable Misfire.

Retracing the Director's Steps

To determine why the film has underwhelmed so, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow earned her laurels with a series of versatile and dynamic movies: biker flick The Loveless, the epic vampire tale Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the classic Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. A sharper insight of her creative evolution came with 1995’s underheralded Strange Days, an electrifying near-future drama, informed by the Rodney King incident, which also served as a cautionary fable about the perils of escaping from the real world to seek shelter in the simulated environment. (Bigelow proved more alert to this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, now preparing the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her fame expanding, Bigelow – like her the United States – 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 time of national tension, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s long history of racism.

You can understand why a director with this background might be interested in Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the previous news executive who scripted Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the streamer would strongly support a missile crisis drama after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One concept for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)

High Points and Low Points

Dynamite is at its most effective early on, depicting in near real-time the brief period in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by mysterious forces is picked up on screens of a United States outpost in Alaska and flagged to the executive briefing area, en route towards what everyone learns is its destination: the heart of Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim briskly accelerate the stakes while undertaking an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re set to wondering where this full-length production can possibly proceed once the timer hits zero.

The response – and at this point the frustrations emerge – is back to the beginning: the film then shifts between the perspectives of those top leaders (Tracy Letts’ military officer, secretary of defence Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the introduction glimpsed or heard only in passing. Structurally, the film can’t develop: it’s a lengthy film with less than twenty minutes of story, leaving Oppenheim to return to the initial segment multiple times, every iteration trowelling on debated technical details while inching everyone nearer the feared explosion. Prior Bigelow films had a tight grip on action and consequence; her finest achievements as a Acclaimed Auteur, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the triggering event is also the final play; the story becomes engaging at the very second the film fades to black. The characters are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for separate causes.

Stylistic and Conceptual Issues

While the scenario revolves in shrinking loops, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve ample time to reflect on the deleterious effect Netflix money has had on the aesthetic of Hollywood productions. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite seemed flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or current streaming offerings recycling the same sets, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Esteemed Stylistic Director disappears, so too does Bigelow the Renowned Feminist Director: Rebecca Ferguson, introduced in that beginning part as possibly one more of this director’s tough-minded working women, clocks off early, so again it’s left to a collection of stern males to try to stop doomsday. The passion Bigelow brought to her pulpier breakthrough films disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s box office disappointment, the director felt she had to curb her risk-taking, but a script this talky required some balancing visual flair.

Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts

The fear A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t global eradication, but a filmmaker's fear of being deemed insufficient; tensing up and practically fossilising as it unfolds, it’s understandable the film should have been overtaken by contemporary, reframing developments. What this story takes for granted is that those holding roles of command would be trained specialists, deeply responsible and that the greatest danger to Chicago in the latter part of 2025 would come from some place other than the White House. Where previous Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their era, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s newer films to fall in the space between neglect, diversion and complete unimportance – instead spends a pair of lethargic hours struggling aimlessly out of touch. It’s devoid of suspense intentionally: even before the stray rocket first registers on a radar, the United States Bigelow’s film depicts has been destroyed utterly.