This week’s Road To Oscar installment offers a pair of perspectives--those of cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, BSC and editor Kirk Baxter--on the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite (Netflix), a film which is also centered on multiple perspectives. The latter POVs--each unfolding in a 20-minute-or-so segment covering the same nuclear crisis--come, respectively, from intelligence officials in the Situation Room, high-level military advisors, and finally the President of the United States himself (portrayed by Idris Elba). A nuclear missile has been launched towards Chicago from an unknown adversary overseas. A race begins to try to prevent the warhead’s impact, to determine who is responsible for the attack, if there are more missiles to come, and how to respond. The pressure on decision-makers--and those supposed to provide them with relevant intelligence--is enormous as Noah Oppenheim’s screenplay at the same time underscores how tenuous the system is that’s designed to protect us. The story and the situation it presents are deadly serious. But in the real world, the public at large pays little or no attention to this existential threat--an indifference that Bigelow and her collaborative colleagues, including Ackroyd and Baxter, set out to help rectify through their narrative artistry. Going into A House of Dynamite, Ackroyd and Baxter were at opposite ends of the experience continuum when it came to collaborating with Bigelow. A House of Dynamite was the first feature film on which Bigelow and editor Baxter came together. They had, however, worked with each other once before--on an Apple commercial in 2021. Ackroyd had earlier teamed with Bigelow on such features as Detroit and before that The Hurt... Read More