Hey film fans, Slick Dungeon here. By now, virtually everyone in the world has seen Oppenheimer so you don’t really need to read this review of it but I am going to give my opinion anyway. But just to get to the point, if you haven’t seen the movie yet, go do it before it’s too late! Yes, it’s really good and it’s worth watching in an actual theater. It is indeed a long haul with a run time of 3 hours so be ready for a long day at the theater. This review will contain a few spoilers for the movie but nothing major. Also, since this is a biographical picture based off a book about a famous person and period in history and it’s pretty accurate, I guess this is also a warning that there will be spoilers for history as well? If you don’t want to be spoiled at all, go see the movie then come back here to read the review.

Let’s start with the obvious here. The cast, the directing, the production, and the storytelling are phenomenal. This is one of those films that has the word Oscar written all over it in thirty foot letters. My bet is we’ll see at least a nomination for Cillian Murphy, Florence Pugh, Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt and Matt Damon. Not to mention one for Christopher Nolan. The film is worth watching for these performances alone. I especially think Cillian Murphy and Florence Pugh really shine in this film.

The plot of the movie centers around both the development of the atomic bomb during World War II and a hearing later in Oppenheimer’s career where his patriotism was questioned because he had some loose ties to communist organizations in his past. It essentially pits Oppenheimer against Lewis Strauss in a political sense. This is where the character tension is but the more fascinating aspect is how Oppenheimer seems to see the world. He’s one of the few people who could actually understand what he was building and why. And he was one of the few people who could actually understand how risky it was to use the bomb and what the worries of proliferation would be.

The movie is set in two basic time periods, before and after the war. Interestingly, the world is in color in the time period before the bomb is dropped but turns black and white when Strauss essentially tries to hang Oppenheimer out to dry politically. Where Oppenheimer’s world is full of bright colors, big events, huge casts of characters and scientists and politicians all trying to understand life, Strauss’ world is narrow, black and white and all about him.

While I’m not going to get into any major spoiler territory here, I do want to point out the few points I feel the film doesn’t handle perfectly. First, while we see Oppenheimer seem to imagine the devastation caused by dropping atomic bombs, there are no scenes of any kind where the explosions happened. I realize the story is told through Oppenheimer’s eyes but even a single scene set in Hiroshima or Nagasaki before and after the explosions could have helped the audience to understand the immensity of what was happening.

My second gripe is the movie only barely touches on the fact that Oppenheimer knew the need for regulating atomic energy and fought hard for that for the latter part of his life. While he still seemed to think the invention of the bomb was necessary given the circumstances of World War II, he understood how out of control things could get without major oversight of such an immense power.

I will say that the last line of the film is one hell of an ending and justifies the long run time of the film. Overall, it’s a great achievement of a film, worthy of the complicate man it portrays. If you haven’t gone out to see this one yet, get on it when you have a full day to dedicate to it.

Praisingly yours,

Slick Dungeon