This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labour of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being reviewed here wouldn’t exist.

It’s the biggest weekend for movie audiences so far this year. Barbenheimer, a portmanteau of BARBIE and OPPENHEIMER, the two summer tentpole films that both opened yesterday here in Hong Kong and today everywhere else; is on everyone’s lips. “Should I see both?” “Which should I see first?” I’ve already reviewed BARBIE and yes, it does live up to its hype. Now, the question is whether OPPENHEIMER does too. The short answer is yes, it does, big time.

Writer-director Christopher Nolan’s (TENET; DUNKIRK) latest time-jumping epic tells the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy, A QUIET PLACE PART II; TV’s PEAKY BLINDERS), the father of the atomic bomb. Based on the 721-page, 2005 biography of the theoretical physicist, “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer”, Nolan frames his tale around two pivotal events in Oppenheimer’s life – his fall from grace in 1954, which is filmed in grainy colour, and the 1959 senate confirmation hearings for his nemesis, Admiral Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr., AVENGERS: ENDGAME), which is filmed in black & white. The latter of these ultimately led to Oppenheimer’s political rehabilitation in 1962. Throughout the telling of these two stories, various characters, including Oppenheimer’s wife, Kitty (Emily Blunt, JUNGLE CRUISE; MARY POPPINS RETURNS); Lt. General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon, THE LAST DUEL), who oversaw the Manhattan Project; and fellow physicist and later the father of the hydrogen bomb, Edward Teller (Benny Safdie, ARE YOU THERE G–D? IT’S ME, MARGARET.), who worked with Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project and often clashed with him, recall key events in their shared past. These flashbacks are filmed in vivid colour, which definitely helps keep all the stories straight in the audience’s minds.

There’s a whole lot more to the story than just this. It’s a three-hour movie, after all, but Nolan keeps the story moving along at a good pace so that it never becomes anything other than completely riveting. Quite interestingly, the test explosion in the New Mexico desert is not the centerpiece of the film, although it’s an impressive feat of pyrotechnics, nor are the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but Nolan uses the sounds and flashes of light from those events to convey to the audience the inner turmoil Oppenheimer must have felt knowing that he created this monster and that there was no going back from it.

The cast of OPPENHEIMER is huge with many well-known faces in addition to the ones already mentioned – if you can pick them out. Their hair and makeup are done so well that the actors disappear into their characters. Florence Pugh (BLACK WIDOW) plays Oppenheimer’s lover, Jean Tatlock, Josh Hartnett (OPERATION FORTUNE: RUSE DE GUERRE) plays cyclotron inventor Ernest Lawrence, Kenneth Branagh (DEATH ON THE NILE) plays Danish physicist Niels Bohr, and Gary Oldman (THE HITMAN’S BODYGUARD) plays Harry Truman, to name just a few. Perhaps the most impressive of all, however, is Tom Conti (SHIRLEY VALENTINE), who is unrecognisable as Albert Einstein.

Without a doubt, OPPENHEIMER is the best movie that has come out so far this year and it will certainly be in the running for many awards come the end of the year. I’m not a Nolan groupie but this film is truly a masterpiece. It will be interesting to see if any of the films due out towards the end of the year can top it.

OPPENHEIMER is playing around the world now. It was filmed in IMAX so if you’ve got an IMAX screen near you, that’s where you should see it. As for the Barbenheimer questions, yes, you should see both films, and I would recommend you see BARBIE first.

Thanks for reading but don’t be a lurker! If you liked what you just read, here are some suggestions:

Sign up to receive my movie reviews in your inbox automatically
Share this review on your Facebook page
Leave me a message telling me what you thought of my review or the film
Bookmark the site and visit often
Like my Howard For Film Facebook page
Watch my reviews on my YouTube page
Check out my Howard For Film magazine on Flipboard
Tell your friends about the site