Matt Walker’s review published on Letterboxd:
Oppenheimer at its core, a movie about cause and effect.
The people you hurt, the things you create, the live you live and the consequences that follow. It's baked into the text and in the way Nolan chooses to edit out of sequence. It's the masterstroke that elevates this from being a simple biopic and turns it into a cautionary tale told over years and years.
And the dark magic of this movie might have you think to yourself "well of course he did what he did, there was no other choice". When the threat of the Nazi's is looming and your people are being caged and exterminated, the desire to strike back must be massive and the ability to use science to shift the scales is present until one is confronted with the reality of those decisions.
Downey Jr is obviously incredible in this, but everyone gets a scene to absolutely slam dunk the ball. Krumholtz is shifting into Wayne Knight's role in pop culture the way Tim Allen became the Santa Clause. Blunt has a drink in almost every scene and pours herself into the flask of the great alcoholics in cinema. Damon takes the movie away with him as the gruff general sent to oversee the Manhattan project. There's a lot of personalities and ego clashing over the creation of what will become the defining achievement of science for better or worse.
This movie is long. And talky and stylistic and WEIRD and also kind of a miracle. I love it
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