MonsterPerfect Good idea lost in the noise

BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Maziun Roland Joffe , author of epic and beautiful "The Killing fields" and "The Mission" , tries to ask some important questions about morality and responsibility in this movie . Unfortunately , "Fat man and little boy " is just a shadow of mentioned movies . Yet it's still a movie worth watching.The movie feels like a TV movie . Joffe doesn't have a chance to impress us with beautiful views (like in his best movies) , because most of the action happens in laboratory or office. "FMALB" is a character driven story and very dialogue heavy . That's another problem . The movie can't surprise you because you already know how it's going to happen . "FMALB" wants and tries to be objective about it's heroes – Oppenhaimer and General Groves . Yet in my opinion they end as one dimensional characters : Groves is cold hearted soldier that wants the bomb to satisfy his pride . He believes that violence solves problems and that his country will be save thanks to the bomb. Oppenhaimer is a man obsessed with his work that slowly sacrifices everything to achieve his goal. There is important symbolic scene in the bathroom – Oppenhaimer washes his hands. In the end movie seems satisfied with retelling the events . It shows us the motivations of the characters , but never really is able to make a comment to their actions . The important questions seems to hang in the air , but are never asked. The movie sends pro-life and anti-war message (the scene with pigeons) , but I was expecting more drama , more unnerving questions – Is it moral to build a bomb ? Does end justify the means ? Is it good to sacrifice personal happiness for greater good ? Dwight Schultz as Oppenhaimer and Paul Newman as General Groves are good in their roles , despite that they don't have chance to show their acting abilities fully . John Cusack is nice as Michael Merrwin . I believe that in some way he symbolizes us – the humanity , the common man. He stands between Oppenhaimer and Groves . He knows what love is and has doubts about the whole project. "Our instinct – tells us to kill or to save life ? I believe that if we had choice we would choose life". Those are important words coming from Cusack's character . "Fat man and Little boy" shows us people who created history and who didn't really understood the consequences of their actions. They were too wrapped up in their own obsessions. In the end they forgot what it means to be a human and it cost life of many people. I give it 5/10.

Rodrigo Amaro "Fat Man and Little Boy" presents the story of the people involved with the creation of the Atomic Bomb in what was known as the Mannhattan Project and how they managed to develop such an risky device in a rushed period of time (because of the still on-going war efforts in Germany and Japan) and lots of other pressures. Those with interest on the subject will be delighted with this piece even with some inaccuracies and fictional compositions made throughout the film.The movie takes us back from 1942 to 1945, the period when the project was conceived under the command of General Leslie Groves (Paul Newman) who personally selected physician J. Robert Oppenheimer (Dwight Schultz) as head of the bomb creation team. The whole crew of militaries, physics and technicians move to Los Alamos Canyon, a desertic spot northwest of Santa Fe where Oppenheimer's challenge is to built the device over a short period of time in order to be tested and used in the war. Great deal of the movie is portraying the ethical conflicts the scientists have with the Army about using such a dangerous weapon over innocent lives versus the need of winning the war at all costs, and militaries need something that would reduce the time spent with more and more battles and reduce their losses. If it was just that presented in a motion picture it will be fine but there's the personal problems of the characters involved with the project, such as the melodramatic involvement between Oppenheimer and his mistress (Natasha Richardson), and the lovely sparkles between one of his young scientists (John Cusack) and a nurse (Laura Dern). This prevents the film a little of being more effective.While the whole scheme of presenting the project can be easily digested by audiences which makes this film more accessible than it looks, the script written by Bruce Robinson and Roland Joffé isn't much challenging or exciting to be fully appreciated, some of the dialogs aren't well written, quite uninteresting, rarely memorable. For a story like this, we needed more excitement, more tension to feel completely immersed in its complexity. Managed to succeed in presenting the clashes between science and ethics with the battles between the two main characters in charge of this big endeavor, hearts and minds that changed the world by playing of God for a small moment of their lives. However, the more discouraging aspect of "Fat Man..." was the performances. While Newman was somewhat miscast (but he's good given what he had to do), Dwight Schultz comes as an strange choice for such big role, here's an actor who's hard to get used to, his presence on screen isn't that remarkable and since this was a high budget project made by a big studio they should demand to the director Joffé an more familiar face to Oppenheimer's part. The supporting cast makes the ride more interesting and fun specially John C. McGinley, Dern and Cusack, Fred Dalton Thompson and Bonnie Bedelia. Neither much memorable or so forgettable, "Fat Man and Little Boy" ("Shadow Makers" in UK) is a good film, greatly recreates those times and it is historically fascinating. Very underrated. 8/10

Michael Neumann The director and co-writers of 'The Killing Fields' condense the 19-month Manhattan Project into a confrontation between the freethinking scientific community and the more pragmatic military mind, represented on one hand by physicist Robert Oppenheimer and on the other by General Leslie Groves, who staked his career on not only getting the atomic bomb built but doing so before the war could end and thus make the project redundant. By necessity the film has to skim over too many fascinating moral debates; nineteen months is a lot of ground to cover, especially with so much valuable screen time wasted on romantic subplots. But even dodging some vital issues the film still presents a tense, tidy historical drama, and Paul Newman's performance as General Groves may be the best portrayal of a military man since George C. Scott ran roughshod over the krauts in 'Patton'. The title, by the way, refers to the nicknames of the A-bombs eventually used on Japan and not, presumably, to the film's two protagonists.

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.