Fat Man and Little Boy

Los Alamos, 1942. General Leslie Groves takes command of the project to build the atomic bomb and puts Robert Oppenheimer in charge of the science. The film watches military authority and scientists collide in a closed city built in the desert. It is not interested in the physics of the bomb. It is interested in the pressure of the calendar: for Groves the point is to make the deadline, and for the scientists it is never having time to think about what they are making. The strongest thread is the death of a young physicist exposed to a fatal dose of radiation during a criticality experiment. The form is big-production: wide desert shots, crowded laboratory scenes, a countdown. The title comes from the code names of the two bombs. Roland Joffé directed. Paul Newman plays Groves and Dwight Schultz plays Oppenheimer, with Bonnie Bedelia and John Cusack in the cast. Who it is for: viewers interested in the Manhattan Project and in the serious historical drama of the eighties. Who it is not for: anyone wanting historical precision. The film merges characters and events for dramatic effect, which is why historians criticised it on release.