jason-210 If you know the history of this project then you'll probably find it a little disappointing because parts of it are fictionalised and heavily dramatised. For example. protagonist Michael Merriman is a fictional character, and the accident he suffers never happened during the project, although that accident did occur in 1946 to a guy called Louis Slotin. Also, killing off this character at that point in the movie left me feeling somewhat cheated.While I enjoyed Paul Newman's role, I think he was miscast as General Groves, and Dwight Schultz was far too good looking for Oppenheimer, who in real life was thin and wirey and of somewhat unearthly looks. However, these criticisms don't spoil what is a good movie. My only real disappointment was the poorly simulated detonation at the end. In reality, the detonation began with an immediate silent, blinding blue-white flash, with the sound and blast wave arriving at the bunkers several seconds later. However, in the film, the flash is yellow and the sound is heard straight away.If you want an insight into what the project and those involved in it were really like, then I suggest you watch the documentary like "The Day After Trinity" and listen to Richard Feynman's amazing talk "Los Alamos from Below".

jvance-566-20403 There's no way to effectively present this subject of great technical, political and philosophical complexity in a 2 hour film but it's not a bad effort.If you're looking for technical or historical accuracy on the Manhattan project you'll be disappointed. But if you're interested in a portrayal of two equally formidable but very divergent personalities who by accident have been yoked together to achieve success in one of the most transcendent projects in human history, you'll get a treat.Dr Oppenheimer and Gen Groves had totally different world views. Oppenheimer was an aesthete who was fascinated by everything. He thrived in the foggy edges of uncertainty and wasn't deterred by not having clear conclusions. Groves was the ultimate pragmatist. A task-oriented, black & white manager who saw only the project in front of him and cared only about it being accomplished. The two of them had to perform a delicate pas de deux, constantly prodding and testing, pushing and pulling to get things their way. A ballet between a sorcerer and a scorpion. But it worked.Dwight Schultz and Paul Newman pull off what is probably a pretty good likeness of how these 2 men worked together. A combination of mutual contempt and admiration but both on the same mission.As far as the technical portrayals, a 'meh' is about the best I can give. But in truth, the details are only of interest to geeks. The accident involving John Cusack's character actually happened about a year later to physicist Louis Slotin, although a not dissimilar event occurred not long after the bombs were dropped that involved another scientist named Harry Daghlian.For anyone who really wants a thorough but understandable primer on the subject, then Richard Rhodes Pulitzer winning "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" is the thing. It's a real tome but it covers a lot of ground.

theowinthrop I find it remarkable that so little was actually done with the story of the a-bomb and it's development for decades after the Manhattan Project was completed. My suspicion is that this was due to serious fears in the movie and entertainment industries (in the 1950s through the 1970s) with "McCarthyism" and related national security phobias (including the Hollywood blacklist). There was one film in the 1950s (with Robert Taylor) about Col. Paul Tibbits who flew the Enola Gay in the Hiroshima bombing, but otherwise nothing else. One could glance at a side issue tragedy (the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis soon after the delivery of the bombs to Tinian) in Robert Shaw's description of the shark attacks on the survivors in JAWS. But the actual trials and tribulations of Groves, Oppenheimer, and their team was not considered film-able.And then in 1989 two films appeared. I have reviewed one already (DAY ONE) which I feel is the better of the two in discussing the lengthy technical and emotional and political problems in the Manhattan Project. The acting of Brian Dennehy as General Groves and David Strahairn as Oppenheimer was first rate and neatly balanced. Small side vignettes concerning the anti-bomb crusade of Szilard (Michael Tucker) help fill out the story well.That's the problem here. Paul Newman is a great actor (as is Mr. Dennehy) but Newman approached Groves in a different way that while not dreadful is lesser than Dennehy's intelligent but soft spoken military brass. Newman seems too popped eyed about the possibility of the weapon as the biggest stick to confront the other boys in the after-school yard with. Yes it certainly was, but the real Groves would have been more like Dennehy keeping his mind not on that great toy of the future but on the business of creating that great toy. Dwight Schultz's performance as Oppeheimer helps maintain the film's basically interesting and good production, aided by Bonnie Bedelia as his wife. But the most interesting aspect of this film is in the upgrading of the two tragedies of Daghlian and Slotin, in particular the latter, in the character of John Cusack's Merriman. Inevitably in all technological advances people are killed. It's just that these two tragedies (on top of the tens of thousands that were lost in Hiroshima and Nagasaki) brought home the dangers of the new unleashed power even in a so-called peaceful, controlled experiment. The two tragedies (particularly Louis Slotin's slow, agonizing death by radiation poisoning) showed how much care was needed in using atomic power - and how the barest of chances could still cause disaster. The only really different thing I saw in Cusack's performance (and the script) and the actual incident with Slotin was that Slotin actually took some time after the accident to figure out where all his fellow research scientists were when they were hit by the radiation from the accident (he was able to show that only he got the full effect of the accidental blast, so that only relatively minor treatment would be needed by the others). Perhaps the full story of Slotin's actions was too technical for the screen, but given the humongous pain he suffered in the end that he took time off to think of the others shows what a first rate person he really was.

bkoganbing Fat Man And Little Boy were the code names of the two atomic bombs that were dropped in reverse order on Nagasaki and Hiroshina. How these came to be and came to be in American hands is the story of this film.The terms by the way are the code names of two bombs fueled with plutonium and uranium. Fat Man was the plutonium bomb and that one was dropped on Nagasaki and Little Boy was the one used on HiroshimaThe film is primarily a conflict between General Leslie R. Groves of the United States Army and physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer who led the team of scientists who developed the bomb under Groves's direction. With two men from as widely divergent backgrounds as these were, conflict was inevitable.Paul Newman who all his life has been a disarmament activist plays General Groves. To his credit Newman does not play a man whose views he would very little in common with as any kind of caricature. Groves is a military man first and foremost with an engineering background. He wanted a combat command as trained military professionals would naturally want in this greatest of wars. But because of his background in engineering Groves got to head the Manhattan Project which was what the effort was code named. So be it, Newman is determined to make his contribution to the war effort count.Most of us first became acquainted with Dwight Schultz from the A-Team as H.M. Murdoch the pilot whose grip on reality is tenuous at best. If one was only acquainted with the A-Team, one might think that Schultz had a great future in comic roles.Instead Dwight Schultz is one of the best actors in the English speaking world with an astonishing range of dramatic parts since leaving that television series. J. Robert Oppenheimer in life was a complex man who recognized the dangers and benefits of atomic energy. The challenge of the problem also intrigues him. Later on Oppenheimer got into a real bind because of his left-wing political views and associates which everyone knew walking into the Manhattan Project. Some of the lesser roles that stand out are Bonnie Bedelia as Mrs. Oppenheimer, Natasha Richardson as Oppenheimer's Communist mistress whose affair with Oppenheimer got him in such a jackpot later on, and Laura Dern as a nurse at the Los Alamos site.But the best is John Cusack who as Michael Merriman is a composite of some real life scientists who might accurately be labeled as the first casualties of the atomic age. His scenes with Laura Dern, especially with what happens to him, take on a real poignancy.The debate over the bombs as the use put to them is still a matter of raging debate. Fat Man And Little Boy presents the facts and lets you decide what might have happened if an alternative use of them had been taken.