Stew’s review published on Letterboxd:
Barbenheimer - Film 1.
Edit: After a couple of days of letting this settle down in my brain, I have to give it another half star.
A very slow start builds tempo into a deafening, asphyxiating climax. The moment Matt Damon's Lt Gen Groves turns up it's like we've been hitched to the military expedition, and the race is on to beat the Germans, then the Russians, to The Bomb. Imagine inventing a cure for cancer and finding out that actually someone's just turned it into a cancer bomb. The Super Bomb to end all bombs kickstarting the Cold War is one of the most deliriously suicidal states we've ever found ourselves in.
This is flawed and you need to be patient at the start, but christ - it's worth the wait. I'm amazed at how dense this is too, so much information being delivered from both the research and development side to the personal to the smear campaign etc. Possibly a career best performance from Robert Downey Jr. and Cillian is predictably superb, but the whole cast are doing superb work.
Side note - Odeon cinema sucked, they leave the orange, wall up-lighting on throughout the film, it's distracting and affects the film.
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