Movie Review: Oppenheimer
On one visit to my grandparent's house, I played with this fluffy soccer ball. My grandpa saw me and told me that when they were putting together "the bomb," it was put together like the soccer ball, pentagonal pieces around the explosive core. That was the first time I knew my grandpa worked on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos.
"Oppenheimer" is not just a movie about the making of the atomic bomb; it is more of a biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy).
Murphy has always been an incredible actor, but this movie will open the eyes of much of the movie-going public. He is best known for playing The Scarecrow in Christopher Nolan's Batman movies. Nolan, who directed this movie and has cast Murphy in six movies, puts him front and center, and Murphy makes the most of it. It is not a big bombastic performance (no pun intended). Oppie is a quiet man who is methodical in his approach to most things, so he will not have outbursts of emotion, and this is where Murphy excels. He brings an unshakable calmness to the performance, even in high-stress situations.
I do have a few critiques. One of them is a common critique of Nolan's movies; his female characters are consistently underwritten and underdeveloped. It is all the more apparent when you have two powerhouse actors like, Emily Blunt, who plays Kitty Oppenheimer, and Florence Pugh, who plays Jean Tatlock. Pugh's character is an on-again-off-again girlfriend of Oppie and doesn't get much to do in the few scenes she is in. Blunt's role is reduced to the supportive wife of a genius, and it's very cliched.
Nolan is famously anti-CGI. He relies on practical effects as much as possible, and so the explosion of the bomb is done practically. When this information was first revealed, there were jokes that the filmmaker exploded a real nuke. No official behind-the-scenes secret has been spilled on this, but the prevailing theory is that he blew up the equivalent of dynamite. It is a very cool-looking explosion, and the entire sequence leading up to it is incredibly tense. Will the rain stop so they can go forward with the test? Will they ignite the atmosphere and destroy the world? At my screening, three people in the row in front of me were leaning forward for the entire sequence.
"Oppenheimer" is Noaln's masterpiece. It takes advantage of his best and worst qualities. His female characters are almost non-existent, but he makes a movie about people talking in rooms incredibly compelling. This is required viewing for anyone in the Levy family. It is an excellent companion piece to all the stories that Grandpa told. When it showed the bomb being put together, I remembered the day with the soccer ball.
9/10
Rated R
3hrs.
