Christopher Nolan's lates film follows Robert Oppenheimer's life from his student days through the develoment of the atomic bomb in Los Alamos to the refusal to prolong his security clearance in the mid fifties due to doubts about his loyalty.

Oppenheimer is Nolan's weakest film so far. The better title would have been: The Canonization of Robert Oppenheimer. The entire project leaves the impression of trying to right a wrong that has been done to a US hero through the means of fiction. Otherwise, the simplifying recreation of historic events and personalities would make no sense.

Nearly all characters come across as cardboard figures not as living human beings. Matt Damon personifies the stiff but upright US general. The scientists are naive, good natured idealists. The politicians are malicious tacticians. This way, Nolan is able to use his characters in a functional way to tell his story but neglects any complexity. In this respect, Oppenheimer's script is breathtakingly thin.

What's more, the movie suggests that Oppenheimer was a physicist on par with Einstein, Bohr or Heisenberg. But whereas these scientists did truly groundbreaking work leading the Quantum revolution, Oppenheimer - who surely was an outstanding thinker - doesn't have comparable scientific merits. Exploring his scientific status would have interfered with the film's key argument. Therefore, the script - again - remains superficial.

The final act - the security hearing in the 50s - is narrated within the constraints of classical Hollywood courthouse drama. In these scenes and sequences, Nolan's film comes very close to Oliver Stone's political cinema. Good and bad are neatly divided and it's more important to make a point than to accept - and show on screen - the fact that reality is much more complex, confusing and irritating than dramaturgical necessities.

There are some moments in Oppenheimer that are memorable. For example, his speech at Los Alamos after the successful Trinity test. The photography is very good and I like the sound design - Oppenheimer shows once again that Nolan really loves film as an audiovisual medium. But all things considered, the movie is a lost opportunity to tell a truly insightful story about the complicated relationship between politics, science and the military.