Film Review - Oppenheimer (2023)

Oppenheimer is the new movie by Christopher Nolan and stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer who invented the Atomic Bomb and was later accused of being a Communist.

Oppenheimer was one of my most anticipated of the year mainly due to Christopher Nolan who’s last 2 films Dunkirk and Tenet are not only my favourite films he’s made but also topped my favourites lists of their respective release years but could be build on those and get that 3 peat favourites win or was this bomb to be a dud like Sideshow Bob’s when he went for that retro 50s charm.

Well so far Oppenheimer is my movie of the year but this year is far from over movie wise and Dune Part 2: Long Live the Fighters is still to come but this movie is a terrific one by Nolan and he manages to take a very familiar story especially if you’ve seen the Hunt for Red October and make something gripping and terrifying out of it.

Firstly I have to talk about the use of sound design in this movie the times where the bomb is shown and referenced you feel in your bones and at one point I was literally on the edge of my seat and then wanting to duck and cover under it as I felt this terror envelope me from head to toe and this feeling of absolute dread of “What have we done” rattle in my brain.

And its gripping in the sense that you feel both the personal and global stakes of this race to acquire this deadly weapon and what it could do to those who made it as well as the human race as a whole and Cillian Murphy finally gets to lead a Nolan film and he doesn’t disappoint playing the man as someone who was a radical and a genius and then a haunted soul living with the consequences of his invention as well as the treatment his country gave him as thanks.

Also extremely good is Robert Downey Jr and it is as much his movie as it is Murphy’s and these 2 men and their performances highlight what I feel Nolan does so well with this movie and that is that this is as much about humanity as it is about history (and it does that very well also) and what we can do to ourselves both on a global nuclear scale as well as personally where we can rub someone the wrong way or feel that for whatever reason we don’t like them or are somewhat jealous of what they’ve achieved either in their own life or in service to their country.

If I have one criticism of this movie it’s that it’s a little long at 3 hours and towards the end I was checking my watch on a few occasions and getting the message from my bottom that its sat in this cinema seat long enough.

And so that was Oppenheimer and it’s a terrific film by Christopher Nolan who continues his post Interstellar winning streak and hopefully next time he’ll base his next movie on the Red Dwarf episode White Hole much like Tenet did the Backwards world like the Boys from the Dwarf did, 4 and a half out of 5.