A dramatic mystery filled story about the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer [Cillian] who helped develop the first nuclear weapons that ended World War II. From his mysterious childhood through maturity, Oppenheimer was considerably enthralled with the mechanics of Quantum physics and understood the impractical factors and problem solving steps to deliver the stages just required to understand the small details to produce such a weapon. He puts together a world-wide team of scientists and builds a small town in Los Alamos, New Mexico to help develop each stage of the first U.S. Atomic weapon. After the weapons development and successful delivery at two targets in Japan, Oppenheimer was scrutinized by the U.S. Government as being a communist and it as alleged that he was sharing information with communist spies who were known to exist in America.
THE GOOD - Director Nolan spared no expense to encircle this film with so much detail, that the great detail in presenting a 1940's feel to the film demanding him to switch filming formats from color to black and white at times. The large part of this feature film was delivered with practical special effects, which in my opinion truly brought the actors to actually "feel" their characters plight during the testing and eventual development of the atomic weapon. Nolan's masterful eye with the epic scene capturing through cinematography was pristine and totally epic at all levels of cinematic presentation.
THE BAD - With a large talented group of veteran actors, I'm surprised that no one performance stood out amongst the cast. Cillian lost a lot of weight to portray the part of Oppenheimer, but his performance throughout the film wasn't his personal best. The editing to the film is all over the place, there are flashbacks and flash forwards that tend to feel a little confusing, but it was a little niche that Nolan is not truly known for in his directing methods. There may have been too much work in the production to keep in line with the era presented, like the diligence of the governmental oversite committee who questioned every step of Oppenheimer's "compartments of security" measures that were ill developed, and seemed to slow down the progress of the film. There were too many dramatic pauses and audio effects that were meant to deliver a deafening tone that in my opinion was just over used. And once again, the mumbling and low voices during dramatic dialog killed the intended intensity of each critical moment in the film.
POST MORTEM - This is a good film. Maybe the film is too good for it's own good, but I don't feel that this is Christopher Nolan's best work. I understand that this film won a slew of awards at the Oscars, but I'm sure there were better films released in 2023.
⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 [3.5 of 5 Stars]
