OPPENHEIMER (2023) ****

I know a lot of you have been wondering, “Where are the nominations for the 17th Annual Video Vacuum Awards?”  Well, I have been slacking, yes that’s true, but I also wanted to squeeze in a few more new-to-me 2023 films before I lock in the nominations.  Trust me, I should have the nominations out before that OTHER awards show hits airwaves.

One of the films I wanted to catch up with was Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s tale of the modern-day Prometheus, Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), who along with the brightest minds in the scientific community built the first A-Bomb in Los Alamos, New Mexico.  Later, the government used his political leanings and left-wing associations against him during the war on Communism to drag his name through the mud.  And he kind of let them, mostly as a way of making up for his part in creating the bomb. 

Nolan’s film is a masterclass in efficiency.  Even though it’s three hours long, it feels much shorter (how many times do you hear me say THAT?) as it barrels along at a breakneck pace.  Which is fitting, as America is in a race to make the bomb before Germany.  It’s stunning how Nolan condenses and compresses each scene to only the most vital information to get you to the next sequence.  Even though much of the dialogue is dense and is full of quantum physics jargon, the performers all convey it all to the audience in a manner that gets the point across, even if you flunked physics in high school. 

Nolan goes back and forth between time periods from the creation of the bomb to its aftermath to the interrogation of Oppenheimer.  Like a good novel, it’s totally immersive and absorbing.  If it was told in a linear fashion, it wouldn’t have hit as hard. 

The performances from the all-star cast are uniformly great from top to bottom.  Murphy is particularly captivating as the dogged Oppenheimer, who rushed against time to make the bomb, and then is crushed when he sees what he’s created.  Florence Pugh has a small but memorable turn as his mistress, Emily Blunt is excellent as his long-suffering wife, and even the usually bland Josh Hartnett is quite good as Oppenheimer’s colleague.  Robert Downey, Jr. is terrific as Oppenheimer’s superior, who is so wounded by not being his intellectual equal that he sets out to take him down a peg.  Matt Damon is equally fine too as the general sent to wrangle Oppenheimer. 

What more can I say?  This movie is the bomb, yo.