The idea of watching a three hour movie about anything just doesn't appeal to me anymore. Even on Netflix, where I finally watched Oppenheimer in two hour and a half sittings, it took me this long to finally commit time to it.
That said, I am actually interested in the Oppenheimer story, and always planned to watch this movie eventually on streaming.
Fortunately this movie does reward you with an engaging story that never seems to drag, despite its length.
The movie follows Oppenheimer's story from his early days through to just after his success with creating the first atomic bomb and the repercussions of how he felt about that achievement.
From what I've heard the broad strokes are inline with history but some license with the details may have been taken to tell a more cohesive narrative.
Cillian Murphy plays the title role and does a good job in fleshing out who Oppenheimer may have been. I've never really heard of Oppenheimer being described as a charismatic leader, and ladies man but I guess he must have been (not that I'm any kind of historian or particularly know anything about him beyond basic general knowledge).
Robert Downey Jr. received an Oscar for his performance as Lewis Strauss, who I guess got the ball rolling on the atomic bomb program, and then tried to distance himself politically from Oppenheimer post bomb, and then tried to have him removed from the future of the program altogether.
For a while I couldn't see why Robert particular got the Oscar since his character moves in and out of the story quite a bit, but Downey really brings it home at the end with some longer and more complex scenes.
There's not too much I can really say about the film. Stylistically it's a very Christopher Nolan type of film. The supporting cast all gave solid performances, and I learned a bit more about Oppenheimer than I previously knew.
It's a good film with almost zero chance of me ever watching it again... because why would you?
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