Oppenheimer - review

 

Big Fat Dud ?

OPPENHEIMER 

AKA 

YAP-FEST 23

A little less talk and a little more action

My opinions will probably get me a stoning offence. But as a frustrated film maker, I look at such movies and just wish I could steer them in the right direction. But never mind. Here goes. 

Ask anyone, I hate giving bad reviews. Not that anyone cares. I hate critics that slam movies for being a breed apart, for going that extra mile, for being different. However Oppenheimer is not that movie. 

I couldn't believe I was actually duped by the idea that this film could be something worth my time. Afterall, an all star cast lead by the robust Cillian Murphy, Robert Downy Junior and Matt Damon, what could possibly go wrong? 

Well plenty it seems. And like the Emperors New Clothes, I suspect most critics will praise it for all sorts of academic reasons. 

But it simply didn't grab my attention. And heres why. 

TOO MUCH YAPPING. 

Don't get me wrong. I like a dialogue heavy film as much as the next movie buff. But sometimes you just want to be wowed by some gratuitous sex and a big explosion. And on the face of it, this movie has all that to offer. Altho, those sex scenes are kinda ruined by all that yapping. 

Put it this way, if you like nothing more than talking heads for three hours then this is your movie. Because that is pretty much what you'll get. 

LOUD YAPPING. Quiet Yapping. Frenzied Yapping. YOU CANT HANDLE THE TRUTH type yapping. But as the audience, we're not really connecting with any of this. Oppenheimer yaps to this guy, then it cuts to Oppenheimer yapping to that guy. Then it cuts to Oppenheimer yapping with some girl. Then it cuts to Oppenheimer having sex with said girl and they're still yapping. Yap-yap-yap.  Jeeze. Get to the friken bomb already. 

And that is essentially this movie. Just a series of talking heads cut from one scene to another. And nothing much in between. Anything of interest (like showing us the bomb being built) is all quickly mulled over because Oppenheimer is suddenly at the centre of some McCarthy-ish witch hunt.  

And who's this movies primary audience anyway? Nuclear Physicists? Academics? Because it feels like a film that excludes a lot of useful exposition in favour of just getting to those talking heads. Of which this movie has in abundance. Literally. Its all Cinéma vérité American Style, cerebral, yap-yap-yap. Thats what movies have come to these days. I guess.  

TOO MANY CHARACTERS 

And who the hell are all these people anyways? There's just too many side characters. None of which are really given any real validity. Its like this movie has no focus. 

That said, Robert Downy Junior ingeniously plays the bad guy Strauss,  hell bent on taking  Oppenheimer down. But its all done in such a elongated fashion, with so much happening in between, that his intentions are seldom noticed by us, the audience until way too late. 

Its not like theres any mystery to Strauss. Its just not made clear either way why he hates Oppenheimer because every scene in this movie is riddled with too many characters who all want to be centre stage.

Even the goddam secretary wants her 15 minutes. By which point we've forgotten all about ole' Strauss and his evil plot to undermine Oppenheimer. 

Put it another way. In the Mozart film Amadeus, its perfectly obvious that Mozarts foil, the enigmatic Antonio Salieri (played by F Murry Abraham) is out to get him. A trick that Oppenheimer seems to have missed. 

Even with JFK (which also had a hell of a lot of side characters milling about), one could still keep up with the plot. 

RUNS LIKE A TRAILER 

If you've seen the trailer, you might think wow this movie looks awsum!  That is until you actually watch it and you realise that the entire movie is essentially edited just like said trailer. You could say it is a three hour long trailer. The longest movie trailer ever made. 

You know like when you watch movie trailers, theres those talking heads (again), and one guy says something profound to the other guy. Like:  'We gotta do this thing first before the Nazis do.'  

Then it cuts to something intense. A sex scene, a fight scene, whatever.  Shit like that. This is Oppenheimer in its entirety. 

But I guess thats Nolans approach to film making. It kinda worked with his Batman movies but as a serious bi-op based on real events, I think we as the audience need a more linear approach. 

NO BOMB

For a movie that is all about building the worlds first ever atomic bomb, very little interest is directed upon showing the actual bomb itself. Its all Oppenheimer. Hence the title. At least with similar war movies such as The Imitation Game that covers the life of code-breaker Alan Turing, we get a sense of the protagonist grappling with the technology, plugging things in, trying to get his machine to work. 

But Oppenheimer is pretty much Oppenheimer and very little else. 

A few shots of technicians building the bomb might have gone down nicely.  Surely thats a whole five minutes of tension? Handling those radio active blocks, like a deadly game of Tetris? 

But no. And I'm left there thinking,  Wheres the scenes of nervous tech guys covered in sweat, slowly, carefully putting the 'Demon Core'  together?  Despite later claiming the lives of two physicists, at no point is this ever mentioned or even alluded to. 

But we do get marbles. For every ounce of Uranium-235 that is mined and refined, Oppenheimer drops the equivalent of a marble into a large goldfish bowel. Its a neat way to illustrate the hassle to mine this stuff and it really works but the fact that we're kinda lacking the whole building the bomb thing, leaves the audience hanging. 

Nor are the stakes really justified. We get a couple of scenes with nervous scientists and Einstein, here and there and a brief run down by Oppenheimer to the General, that the bomb could possibly set the atmosphere on fire but never mind. 

DUD CLIMAX 

But worst of all is the actual bomb test itself. 

We've all been gearing up to this one moment kids, for a good two and half hours. 

I'm sitting there thinking, this better knock my fucking socks off. I mean its the worlds first ever test of an atomic bomb right? Which could potentially wipe out our entire planet and then some. It better be good.  

So they do the count down. A tech guy presses a big red button. And then pffffff.  Jesus what a dud. 

The screen is filled with a fireball. No sound. Its all for the sake of art of course, for dramatic effect. Like those moments you see in war movies when the chips are down and the bad guys are closing in. 

Like the end of I am Legend. Will Smith is trapped behind a glass door. The king of the infected football yobs is doing his dammdest to head-but his way inside. 

They always cut the sound.  You have to imagine the horror for yourself. I get it. Theres probably some movie term for it. Like 'neo-realist-interplay'.  Who knows.  Answers on a post card please. 

So the bomb goes off. And I'm expecting some spectacular CGI effect feast. What we get is probably one of the lamest explosions ever filmed. Sure It looks real enough. Like they actually got a bunch of TNT and let it all off. In fact thats precisely what they fucking did. And it jars with the expectation. 

What should be a godly explosion, striking fear and horror into the audience, is instead a rather run-of-the-mill bang that you might expect from a studio controlled pryo-tech effect. 

And thats all it is. A small looking explosion. A fireball yes, a mushroom cloud (sorta) but not the crazy wow I should receive for being stuck here for three fucking hours. I felt cheated. 

Thank god I didn't have to pay to see this movie. At least I can spend that money now on coke & hookers afterwards to recover. 

Talking of big bangs, take Indiana And the Temple of Chrystal Skulls. Remember the A-bomb scene at the beginning?  Basically any movie with an Atomic bomb going off is better than what I had to endure with Oppenheimer. I've seen better ka-booms in the A-Team and thats saying something. 

The decision to go for a real explosion was (in my humble opinion) a mistake. Director Christopher Nolan might have thought it was a cool idea at the time but it simply doesn't work in the context of the narrative. 

Its like watching Star Wars and Lucas changing the grand finale explosion of the Death Star to something a little more 'realistic' which would likely be quite boring.  

Take Camerons Titanic movie as another example. If the boat just 'sank' like it did in all the other movies, we'd never be lauding that film up as much we have. Ask any schmuck what was the most memorable scene in that movie and they will most likely say: 'When the boat broke in half.' 

In a few years, I doubt anyone will recall that about Oppenheimer. If they remember anything about it at all. 

ALL IN ALL 

So there you have it. My two-pence on this film. Its not a turkey by any rate. But it takes for granted that the audience are all on the same page. This might keep most film critics entertained but as for yours truly, I barely made it to the end without dozing off. But thats just me I guess. 

What would I change about this movie then? Actually I would change very little bar all the yapping. What this movie really lacked was simple memorable scenes. It needed more building the bomb stuff, tension around the Demon Core and basically a humungous explosion that would have put any Spielberg movie to shame. Oh well. Maybe next time.