If you're put off by the bladder-testing running time (mine held out) or the subject matter, I would say don't be.Despite a sympathy with left-wing causes, Robert Oppenheimer is no communist and is able to assure the military of that fact when he's placed in charge of the Manhattan Project to develop an atomic bomb before the Germans do. He settles a big team in the New Mexican desert, complete with wives and children. He has, himself, a colourful private life with women who challenge him, starting with a hard-line communist who eventually kills herself after he leaves her for Kitty, a war widow but already another man's wife.As history tells us, they developed the bomb and the military dropped it on two Japanese cities, bringing WW2 to an end at last. Oppenheimer is troubled by what he's been part of and starts to campaign to prevent any further escalation towards hydrogen bombs.After the war the US turns on him under the auspices of a man with a personal grudge. He is even accused of having been a Russian spy all through the project. As Joe says, the scene with Truman is a classic, especially the president's parting shot.This is a completely gripping story, which jumps about in time from Robert's youth to the years developing to the bomb to the years after, sometimes in colour and sometimes monochrome. The test explosion in the New Mexico desert is really tense, even though we know how it turned out. Cillian Murphy is on screen almost all the time, sometimes digitally made young, and, at the end, aged up. He holds the screen effortlessly.
Susan Kelly ● 369d