Oppenheimer (2023) Review: 3/5 Christopher Nolan’s Pastiche of all the films people love

(Final Trailer for the Christopher Nolan “Oppenheimer.” The pastiche of every film that’s ever existed)

Now, now, I know what the title says, but this might also say just enough. Review over, right? Just kidding, but the reality is that nothing else between this does also present some positive aspects the film presents to the viewer. And none of it equals to a good time, if you look at the three hour length and not what’s inside the screen. Many who saw the three hour run time for a theater sitting probably skipped out on it, like I did. But the review is here, nonetheless. So open up your college level physics textbooks, and prepare for one of the best movies of the last five years.

            The film, based on 2005’s American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin^[1], is posited between two narratives, fission and fusion. Fission and fusion is a term that the scientists that built the atom bomb discussion. A fission bomb is a lighter bomb compared to a fusion bomb that resulted in Oppenheimer’s final result on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The film follows Oppenheimer recalling his past and present that resulted in the outcome of the bomb. It details his time at university, which he didn’t even go to lectures half the time. Reading academic journals, instead. Following his time with his Communist affiliations, which come back to haunt him later in “Fusion” the private depositions led by the US government needling answers out of him. The US government was worried whether or not they would blow up the world, and somehow, we don’t think about that today, because it didn’t happen.      

Cillian Murphy (star of 28 Days Later, Sunshine, and Peaky Blinders fame) gives an astounding performance as Oppenheimer that rivals any modern day tour de force. The outcome is a complicated man that doesn’t present one shade, but a true multifaceted performance that presents so much pain in one single glance. Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, and Robert Downey Jr, all give such great performances that it would take up half the review.