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"I kind of hope the damn thing doesn't go off."
Fat Man and Little Boy, directed and co-written by Roland Joffé from a story by co-writer Bruce Robinson, seems less interested in being a how'd-it-happen than it is being a how-could-it-have-happened. An Intellectual (J. Robert Oppenheimer, played by Dwight Schultz) loses his soul to A General (Leslie R. Groves, played by Paul Newman). Both are taking part in the Manhattan Project.
The movie spans approximately three years, spending an inordinate amount of time on one conflict: Oppenheimer and Groves' attempts to have the upper hand over the other. Actually, Groves seems interested in pulling the wool over the world's eyes. The leads' pissing contest is interrupted by Oppenheimer being forced to break it off with his Communist mistress, Jean Tatlock (Natasha Richardson), the ennui of Kitty Oppenheimer (Bonnie Bedelia), who occasionally gets in bitch-offs with Groves, and a sorta-love triangle among three composite characters: a physicist (John Cusack), a cute-as-a-button nurse (Laura Dern) and a doctor (John C. McGinley). Cusack, Dern and McGinley have nice chemistry and their scenes are a welcome contrast to mumbo jumbo and/or machinations.
"That means the Germans don't have the bomb. Weren't close."
"Sir, is it wise? I mean, suppressing this?"
"Well, you tell me, colonel. It's delicate stuff. I'm talking about my longhairs, my prima donnas. The Jewish element. Take Hitler out of the equation ... they might just run out of stink. Why chance it? We can give this country the biggest stick in the playground. And I intend to do that. And I'll tell you something about our bunch. Get them close. Then they'll go all the way. They're just not close enough yet."
"Yes, sir."
If nothing else, Fat Man and Little Boy gives you the opportunity to see Newman play a SOB. He's capable if not spectacular in the role. Schultz is capable but surprisingly nondescript as Oppenheimer. I simply did not care if abandoned his scruples. That's not a good thing when the movie's point depends on somebody having a conscience.
"Look, I've seen Oak Ridge, all right? That place wasn't built to make one or two bombs. It was built to make thousands of them. Thousands. And pretty soon everybody's gonna have a bomb. They will. What do they do with them? Sit and wait 'til they go off, until 'boom'? Then we got one world full of Michael Merrimans dying from the inside out. Is that what you're looking for? Because that's the future you've made for us! ... Hey, Oppenheimer! Oppenheimer, you ought to stop playing God. Because you are not good at it and the position is taken."
Burn, baby, burn.
Not Recommended.
Thoughts:
-- So, is Manhattan any better?
-- Box Office: Grossing just over $3.5 million on a $30 million budget, this opened at No. 10 and became No. 125 for 1989.
-- Thanks to Joffé and Newman's involvement, I have to imagine this had at least a little awards buzz during production. It ended up being snubbed by the Oscars, Golden Globes and critics associations. In fact, I mostly decided to watch this movie because of a hazy childhood memory. Following the controversy over Disney's liberties with Pocahontas, there was a piece in MAD (or maybe Cracked) about how the studio could turn more challenging material into kid-friendly movies. New, lovable characters included "Crazy Uncle Albert," Tojo, a couple of atoms, Little Boy himself (voiced by Michael J. Fox if I recall right) and Fat Man himself (voiced by John Goodman). If nothing else, I remember Goodman as Fat Man.
-- Critic's Corner: "At one point, someone even utters the line that will not die: 'You gotta stop playing God.'" Vincent Canby snarked. He's got a point, even if McGinley acted the shit out of it. The movie included "earnest (but very brief) discussions that are so simplified by the screenplay they sound like parodies," Roger Ebert wrote. Hal Hinson, Washington Post, liked how the movie didn't sensationalize the story but disliked Schultz: "... stiff and actorly; like an irredeemably tone-deaf singer, he hits only false notes." Canby, Ebert and Desson Howe, also Washington, panned the lack of focus. Howe: "Its effect is more innocuous than lethal, a cloud of un-drama wafted along." He also pointed out that Hiroshima and Nagasaki's actual bombings aren't depicted on screen. It's true: the events, plus Oppenheimer and Groves' fates, are relegated to the epilogue.
-- Brian Wandell, Stanford University, was among the bit players. He wrote about the experience, including how much of the cast (Newman especially) disliked the V-E Day party sequence and how the experiments at Oak Ridge were nearly depicted (in non-accurate fashion) on screen.
-- Hey, There's ...!: Del Close, James Eckhouse, Clark Gregg, Ed Lauter and Fred Dalton Thompson.
-- "Well, Bronson." "Sir?" "It's all about ass, isn't it?" "Sir?" "You kick it or you lick it. That's what it's all about. ... I'm sorry about my language, Bronson. But I'm on the limb. My prima donnas better come through ... or you are looking at a piece of dead meat." "Yes, sir."
-- Next: The Bear. On deck: Crimes and Misdemeanors.
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