Hello, we’re all great actors, big and small: the movie.

Every single performance in this is riveting, funny, emotional, engaging or powerful. It seems every new scene there’s a “oh, THEY are in this too?!” moment, even if viewers might not know the actor’s name at first glance. A who’s who of actors and actresses who have always delivered quietly in the sidelines or prominently in front of the camera.

The MVP here is obviously Cillian Murphy, who is so captivating and subtly brings you into his conflicting mindsets, that you almost have to split focus from him and are forced to take in the surrounding players. Lest you spend the whole film trying to discern his soul from his eyes.

Robert Downey Jr. kicks down the door reminding the world he can deliver an electric performance in any kind of suit, Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt steal every scene they are in, Matt Damon breathes life and levity into the screen; the accolades for this film could just be dissecting each actor’s performance all the way down the credits.

I was so wrapped up in the narrative, with my checking of the time only coming in hour-long intervals (and that was curiosity-driven rather than disinterest or restlessness), that I didn’t take in all the excellent technical aspects.

Except the score, which transcended technical and became the emotional engine of the film. Truly stunning work from Ludwig Goransson.

I’ve always liked but not loved Nolan’s style of direction and editing, but here he hit another level that I really had no qualms with. The flashes between scenes showing abstract notions of atoms, or waking dream sequences, an uncomfortable but exceedingly dramatically-clever sex scene, the hopping from different time periods that always energizes the pace without ever losing our place in it: it was a perfect marriage of style and layered execution of emotions and ideas.

The film is always building to the infamous Trinity Test, and my only minor complaint that isn’t a complaint; is that I didn’t feel what I thought I would during that explosion. I don’t know what I expected my reaction to be, all I know is it didn’t feel satisfactory. The scene had other aims and possibly some conflicting ones, and that combined with a very slight lull afterwards that elicited a feeling of “oh, we’re still going?”, were the only faint strikes I have against this.

As that “dip” is a quickly-forgotten drop in the ocean, and its not even without its own moments of introspective despair and horror. However, the final stretch is what this film is really about, the Trinity Test becomes an extended preamble for this mesmerizing legal-but-not-actually thriller that digs deep into these men and their lives and what we’ve just witnessed.

I really appreciated how the film delivered a whole lot of information and character names in a way that wasn’t unwieldy exposition but also didn’t hold your hand. It trusted you to keep up without being impenetrable to begin with. It really did feel like the fractured and blurred recollections of stressed and complicated people.

A knowledge of the events would likely improve a viewing and that is the biggest compliment I can give it. A historic piece of fiction should not be just a visual checklist of a textbook, it has to be intelligent and entertaining and in my mind; make the viewer want to seek out the finer details.

In that regard, Nolan fully succeeded.

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