Fat Man and Little Boy
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Movie Reviews of Fat Man and Little Boy
Movie Review: Fat Man and Little Boy
Summary: 3 Stars
Overall, I found this to be a fairly good movie, but I just can't stand it when fictitious characters (ie, Michael Merriman (played by John Cusack)) are worked into a plot--usually in an effort to create a love-interest aspect--in order to make the movie more palatible to a general audience. Sorry, but this is a fascinating story in its own right and shouldn't be marred in this way. Fortunately, the complexities of the issues surrounding the creation on The Bomb are addressed, but I think the treatment what the motivations for the individual scientists were left much to be desired.Movie Review: Educational
Summary: 3 Stars
I used this movie in my high school physics class. It has aspects of the Manhattan Project that I was able to flesh out with my students (i.e. physics behind nuclear weapon technology, why development of the first nuclear bomb was a high priority at the end of WWII, etc.) While not 100% accurate; it was good enough and entertaining enough to be useful in my class.Movie Review: Some fine moments trapped in a poor film
Summary: 2 Stars
There are few surer signs of failure on an epic scale, both financially and artistically, than a film changing its title when it is released outside the USA, and so it proves with Roland Joffe's clumsy Fat Man and Little Boy, a would-be epic retelling of the development of the Atom Bomb that crept out into the smallest screens in a handful European cinemas as Shadow Makers when no-one was looking. It's the kind of film where you can see how it could have been excellent, but it remains an infuriating mixture of the good and the bad: some striking imagery gets lost amid some more mundane filmmaking, good performers struggle with cardboard characters and risible dialogue (even Paul Newman visibly squirms when required to deliver "[...] If my primadonnas don't deliver, you are looking at a piece of dead meat!") while the weaker cast members flounder and even Ennio Morricone's score alternates between routine by-the-numbers scoring and the odd moment of inspiration like the truly haunting final elegy.
The chief culprit is Bruce Robinson and Joffe's script, which broadly tells the story and raises the moral dilemmas in what is too often the tritest and most clichéd of fashions, giving the film a feeling of a D-movie script that somehow got A-list production values lavished on it in the hope that they'd distract audiences from the dramatic deficiencies. Much criticised at the time for only showing a single American victim of radiation (a lab accident that actually happened after the bombs were dropped but moved forward for dramatic purposes), it's not the only deviation from history - Oppenheimer's wife, a scientist in her own right, becomes a stereotypical cuckolded lush, for example, while the `Chevalier incident,' when Oppenheimer was unsuccessfully approached by a fellow communist to pass nuclear secrets on to Russia, is curiously ignored beyond a brief elliptical line of dialogue - but the problem is less one of accuracy than that the dramatic license taken doesn't result in a great deal of drama.
There's great potential for conflict between the idealistic chief scientist Robert Oppenheimer, who tries to convince himself he's merely working on a technical problem, and the practical General Groves, who sees the potential political power of `the device,' and the film does acknowledge the manipulation and mind games needed to keep the disparate scientists focussed on the project rather than the moral implications of their actions, but the film rarely makes anything play half as well as it should. Joffe's usual sledgehammer subtlety even has Groves watching a performance of The Sorcerer's Apprentice to hammer home the point just in case the audience missed what the characters have been talking endlessly about for the preceding hour-and-a-half. Moments do stand out - the ominous shadows of the bombs that gave the film its original title in an aircraft hanger, a blazing row with John McGinley's doctor, the shockwave from a strikingly recreated test blast distorting the faces of onlookers and Oppenheimer's moment of triumph freeze-framed into something more uncertain and horribly aware - and the film does finally pick up some dramatic momentum in the last third, but too often it just furrows ground that's been raked over to better effect by television many times before.
Turning down Harrison Ford in favor of The A-Team's Dwight Schultz to play Oppenheimer was a brave move, but one that doesn't quite pay off: he's good, but not good enough to really carry a picture with this many flaws, though the real surprise is how terrible Paul Newman is as General Groves for much of the time, overplaying the bluster but only ever convincing in his quieter moments of exasperation at the scientific mindset and morality. But his performance really only follows the general tone of a fatally uncertain movie that swings between crude bombast and good intentions. There's enough about it that does work to keep you watching, but not enough to really grab you, and for one of the biggest stories of the 20th Century that's not really good enough.
No extras on the DVD but an acceptable 2.35:1 widescreen transfer.
Movie Review: History...with a healthy dose of fiction
Summary: 2 Stars
I heard somewhere that at some point the makers of this movie were arguing about how many Academy Awards the production would bag. That's truly a joke. The movie is probably not as execrable as I thought it would be, but it comes close. The bottom line is that it's rather badly made and most of it is plain fiction. None of the important events described for instance in Richard Rhodes's "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" get any traction here and many of the details portrayed never existed. For instance, Groves never first met Leo Szilard in his hotel bathroom. He never met Oppenheimer inside a bomber cabin. There's no mention of Enrico Fermi's first nuclear reactor, nor of Oppenheimer's difficult relationship with Edward Teller. The movie makes no effort to stick to chronology.
About the only partially redeeming thing is Schultz as Oppenheimer. Paul Newman as Groves puts in a valiant effort but is fundamentally miscast and misdirected. Most of the others are terrible. Edward Teller and Enrico Fermi are caricatures and jokes. The movie puts no emphasis on a couple of the most important events; the science behind implosion, the hectic pace of the project, the intense pressure on Oppenheimer and his surveillance, and finally the taut discussions between politicians and scientists regarding the use of the bomb and the ethical dilemmas apparent in these discussions. And yes, the love story that's constantly a running thread adds nothing of value to the film.
The fact is, if you really want to make a movie about one of the most important events of the twentieth century, you better get the facts right. There are many first-rate documentaries and films on the Manhattan Project including "Day One", the marvelous BBC miniseries on Oppenheimer and John Else's sobering "The Day After Trinity". Even these excellent efforts don't get all the important facts, but this movie doesn't even try. A real disappointment.
Movie Review: Disapponting
Summary: 2 Stars
This is such an important story, with layer upon layer upon layer of aspects of the modern realities ushered in by the Manhattan Project. C.P Snow in his famous essay regarding The Two Cultures raises implications about the way that the humanities department trains young minds relative to the science and engineering department. If the military approached a group of leading poets and declared that poetry possessed a potential they wanted to transform into a super weapon--how would the poets have responded? Posing a similar question to physicists, they all raced to the blackboard to be the first to solve the equation for the authorities.
So many issues, creativity, authority, diplomacy,secrecy, espionage, urgency...all provide the natural elements to a serious, gripping story. But this screenplay chooses to throw in silly romantic subplots, and alter the facts in the service of their silly Hollywood formula.Ughh. Especially annoying is the distortion of the circumstances surrounding the lab accident that befell Louis Slotkin, the Canadian, now morphed into a hybrid romantic figure in this puerile reworking of history. Maybe someday, someone will do the subject justice in a dramatic structure, until then the excellent documentary, 'The Day After Trinity' will have to suffice.
The screenplay illustrates the powerlessness of acting talent in the face of poor writing. Unfortunately, and maybe this is an inevitable remark, the film ends with a whimper, not a bang.