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Undeniably playing it safe; Oppenheimer lacks the frenetic, risk-taking tone that this sort of subject matter demands. You could chalk it up to personal preference, but I just feel as though the film lacks any big or memorable moments, and even the dropping of the test bomb feels anti-climactic with the way it fails to roll into anything larger with respect to the ensuing final hour.
I admittedly found the story engaging and the performances help to hold this together, yet it feels as though with someone else behind the helm we could have gotten the film that a story this central to the dark cloud that looms over the United States deserves — essentially what I am saying is that someone like Oliver Stone could have taken this down a JFK route and made something more grandiose and frenetically conspiratorial, and thus more riveting.
Now my goal is not to bash the film — after all I was certainly engaged, but we are talking about a weapon of mass destruction yet the tone feels more akin to that of academia than annihilation. Maybe I just wanted something more, but at least this can be the vehicle to relaunch Josh Hartnett back into the film world.
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