Bet you didn’t see this coming did you?

A new mini-meh in 2023, about one-half of the so-called “Barbenheimer” phenomenon. Oh yes gentle reader, this was made a cultural phenomenon in the media where a film about a plastic doll product went hand in hand with another about the birth of Nuclear weapons and the people involved. Because of reasons (or marketing as others would call it).

2nd September 2023 was classed as World Cinema Day in the UK, where for once, the cinemas stop overcharging you watching an awful film while putting up with folks bored on their phones and chatting away. That provided the cheap opportunity to finally sample one of the current last big film releases of 2023, because at the time of writing, Hollywood is effectively on strike.

There is a lot to like about the film as a whole, it does deliver so much in a decent style. The changes between black and while to colour for different times and people (Black and While was mostly reserved when we were witnessing events involving Robert Downey Jr’s Lewis Strauss). The lack of VFX too make somewhat of a welcome change too considering we’ve gone beyond the point where everything has to be CGI’ed within an inch of its life, but then again this kind of film wouldn’t be the kind to need to rely on the computer generated meh other genres are now firmly reliant on.

So what’s it all about then?

We follow the fun and frolics of one J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) who while bored and annoyed at an English University almost killed a teacher with cyanide, but we gloss over that while he then proceeds at the behest of a visiting professor (Kenneth Branagh) to wander around Europe learning things from folks before starting a quantum physics class, being quite the ladies man in courting a married woman, Kitty (Emily Blunt) and also having bizarre sex with Florence Pugh (Nice boobs by the way) in a scene you wouldn’t see on Pornhub.

All the while, various mentions of the Communists being naughty, trade unions and that little known event called The Second World War swing around. Cue race against the clock for the Scientific community, put together by General Matt Damon and led by Oppenheimer all having fun in a newly built town on Indian grounds and oh boy what fun ensues, including more moments of sex with Florence Pugh before more booms of the Nuclear kind! Oh my!

To go into detail about the story and plot more in somewhat silly ways, would do a disservice to the content and the history is worth seeing for yourself. On the face of things, the film is quite an engrossing account of events and people involved during the arms race of World War 2 and the aftermath which followed in its wake, both on the people and politics to come afterwards. The cast do give it their all with what they have been given to do, with an excellent ensemble assembled it must be said.

The major issue with the film overall is its volume of content to get through, which leads to ridiculous pacing problems.

There’s so much shoved into the three hour runtime, that nothing is allowed to breathe for too long and therefore any impact to register, process…. can’t happen. This is perhaps one of the times I would have recommended that instead of a film, that this should have been made into a one-off TV series akin to the HBO drama Chernobyl. It would have allowed for us to get to know all the players involved and given more to certain events which shaped the course of Oppenheimer’s life and perhaps not just give us whiplash going from one thing to the next.

Some of the dialog lead to some moments of disbelief which only served to pull you out of the experience. For example; Say you as a wife reacting when you found your husband had nicked a horse to mourn the death of someone he had on / off naughty times with, one time was while he was married to you? I don’t believe the response would have been and of course, this is paraphrasing “You’re so important, you have things to do etc.” would it, even in the 1940s? I strongly suspect there would have been a number of slaps and questioning whether or not to carry on altogether you know!

Ultimately it was this choice in squeezing so much in, that most of the characters involved in events only really became surface-deep and at best two-dimensional, with a few moments allowed for reflection which should have hit harder than they did. This is not down to any of the actors involved, far from it, it’s the material. Any attempts made at tension fizzed-out and the back-stabbing behaviour typical of folks in the McCarthy era have been done over and over again in countless films that although sadly relevant to Oppenheimer’s tale, it doesn’t cover anything new at all. A strange feeling of Deja Vu.

That being said, there are a few standout moments where the actors can indeed let themselves go a little, such as the answers Kitty Oppenheimer gave (Emily Blunt) when being questioned by Roger Robb (Jason Clarke), the “not-a-prosecution-lawyer” at a closed hearing, and what can be described as a cameo, the false niceness and later disgust of Gary Oldman portraying President Truman.

However it’s difficult to escape the questionable dialog at times spouted by the various actors as it seems from the point of view of historians as opposed to folks living in the time, at times devolving to “See, told you this is so important”. It may as well have been an audio book read out loud on Audible.

Actually, now it’s been mentioned, the film itself was based on the 2005 book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer and to that end, if you want the time to absorb the history at your own leisure, rather than the fast pace the film tries to shove everything into, then perhaps it’s probably best to pick up this book instead (or listen to the actual audiobook which exists too!).

So would I recommend seeing Oppenheimer on the Big Screen? No, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth the watch at all. This is something you need to watch away from other folks, at home to digest in your own time, perhaps pause for breaks etc and focus on the story it tells rather than the characters involved, any attempts at drama concocted within it. That is, if you’re not going to pick up the book this was based on instead.

It is an interesting story of how the first nuclear weapons were developed and used. In the end, it is also a timely reminder of how war always seems to spur on technological and scientific development the most, how people are treated once their “usefulness” is outlived and finally, though in 2023 this is certainly not anything new, how petty and awful people can be in politics.

Also Florence Pugh’s boobs are lovely to see on screen. Nice.