‘The morality and consequences of an atomic bomb ‘ – Oppenheimer review

Social media wags have branded today the start of “Barbenheimer Week” as two apparently hilariously different blockbusters go head to head at the box office.

As one is a breezy, ruthlessly marketed family comedy and the other a doom-laden, three-hour historical drama, this was never going to be a fair fight.

But the rivals do have something in common. Despite huge budgets, both have been crafted by filmmakers given plenty of wriggle room by their backers.

In an age of test screenings, franchise building and screen-writing by committee, this rarely happens.

What a week to be alive!

But it’s not a happy time for director Christopher Nolan’s hero J Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), the man credited with inventing the atom bomb.

For Oppenheimer, a brilliant Jewish physicist from New York, the Second World War meant mustering every brain cell to try and stop Hitler’s genocide.

The action begins in 1954 as Oppenheimer is grilled by a government committee over his alleged communist sympathies.

As the nervous scientist reads a statement, flashbacks show how he came to be in charge of the The Manhattan Project, America’s secret atom bomb programme.

But Nolan keeps cutting to 1958 and another hearing, this time shot in black and white, where US nuclear bigwig Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr) is questioned by the Senate over his involvement with Oppenheimer ahead of Strauss’s cabinet appointment.

Nolan switches between the two grillings to provide different perspectives.

Murphy delivers his greatest performance as the driven but tortured scientist, Florence Pugh is brilliant as his troubled on-off girlfriend, as is Emily Blunt as his equally complicated wife. Matt Damon is also excellent as a gruff General. But this is very much the director’s movie.

The film never preaches or simplifies. Eye-popping cinematography conveys the terrible force of Oppenheimer’s bomb, and brilliant writing invites us to chew over the morality and consequences of its creation.

Barbie was always going to beat Oppenheimer at the box office. But, on the big screen, Oppenheimer is far more explosive.

Oppenheimer, Cert 15, In cinemas now