"OPPENHEIMER" (2023)

This is a gigantic movie (3 hours), superbly filmed and well acted. It tells an important story...but not very well. It has three, nonlinear components: Oppie's life loosely put together, his security hearing (1954 and the Senate conformation hearing of his nemesis, Lewis Strauss (1958). All of this is told in irritating, piecemeal jump-cuts, with no supporting context, not even a caption or crawl to tell you what, where or when it's happening. Ditto a parade of characters who are important to the narrative, but who are largely unidentified and unexplained. Unless you've read the Kai Bird/Martin Sherwin Pulitzer-winning "American Prometheus" on which the movie is based, or are well versed in physics and the details of the Manhattan Project, there is no way you can put together the narrative in any rational way that makes sense of this important man and his travails. Cillian Murphy no doubt will win an Oscar for his portrayal of Oppie--he's suitably skinny but has one expression (popping eyes and morose demeanor) and mostly whispers his lines. Matt Damon is ok as Gen. Leslie Groves, the commandant of the project, but he doesn't even come close to matching Brian Dennehy's brilliant portrayal in "Day One," a much better account of the Manhattan Project. The greatly acclaimed sound track simply amps up the noise of explosions and foot-stampings to mega-decibels--no doubt to wake up slumbering viewers.