Fat Man and Little Boy (1989)

If you know the history of this project then you'll probably find it a little disappointing because parts of it are fictionalised and heavily dramatised. For example. protagonist Michael Merriman is a fictional character, and the accident he suffers never happened during the project, although that accident did occur in 1946 to a guy called Louis Slotin. Also, killing off this character at that point in the movie left me feeling somewhat cheated.While I enjoyed Paul Newman's role, I think he was miscast as General Groves, and Dwight Schultz was far too good looking for Oppenheimer, who in real life was thin and wirey and of somewhat unearthly looks. However, these criticisms don't spoil what is a good movie. My only real disappointment was the poorly simulated detonation at the end. In reality, the detonation began with an immediate silent, blinding blue-white flash, with the sound and blast wave arriving at the bunkers several seconds later. However, in the film, the flash is yellow and the sound is heard straight away.If you want an insight into what the project and those involved in it were really like, then I suggest you watch the documentary like "The Day After Trinity" and listen to Richard Feynman's amazing talk "Los Alamos from Below".

Wanted to write a review, since I watched this movie last night for the first time since the early '90's. I was so disappointed. I've been reading a lot about the Manhattan Project, since it and things regarding atomic physics has been a bit of a hobby of mine, since childhood. I'm a huge fan of Newman, but that was wrong casting beyond belief. While it was common knowledge, General Groves was a very strict and stern person, I've never come across any information that portray him as a Patton-like "classic military hard-ass". He was quite a sensible person, who carried a great deal of respect around him, but he was also a person capable of showing this respect towards others, IMHO, this movie and Newman completely miss this, and portray him as being a bit of an arrogant a-hole. The entire story surrounding the Project is so flawed and thin, it beggars belief. Oppenheimer, or "Oppie" was, as others have said, a very complex person. This film portray him, frankly, as a bit of a clown. The entire romantic plot is just down right stupid, and does not ad a single thing to the film. It only manages to slow it down even further. It does not help, that John Cusack is rather annoying is his role as well. The lack of historic characters, like Fermi, Szilard, Einsteim, Neddermeyer, Teller etc. makes it seem pointless. The way the entire screenplay is set up, as the usual Hollywood soap drama, puts the final nail in the coffin for this disaster of a movie. If you want to watch a good flick about the Manhattan Project and people surrounding it, watch Day One. It was made and came out the same year, and is a fantastic piece of film, where every single character and the story is nailed very close to spot on. A glitch here and there, which can only be expected, but very, very good. Why Day One did not become the popular one and FM&LB did, is only a testament to what is wrong with Hollywood and critics. IMO.

This account of the experiments that led up to the development of the atomic bomb in 1945 chooses to deal with the issue far more from a human perspective than from a scientific perspective. The focus is on the men who were involved with the project - especially Gen. Leslie Groves (Paul Newman), who was in charge, and the lead scientist Robert Oppenheimer (Dwight Schultz.) The more technical issues aren't ignored, but the story revolves around the way in which the project impacts on the men's personal lives. On the negative side, the movie takes on at times a bit of a soap opera feel, dealing more with the men's love interests than with the project itself. It was also unfortunate that the movie chose to create the fictional character of "Michael Merriman" (played by John Cusack.) The accident in which Merriman is poisoned by radiation and later dies really happened, but it took place in 1946, long after the war was over, and the victim was actually a Canadian physicist named Louis Slotin. Why this imaginary bit of history was conjured up wasn't really clear to me, except for the fact that it obviously dramatized the dangers of the project, and allowed for the insertion of a tear jerker moment, when a nurse who had fallen in love with him (Laura Dern) comes to him on his deathbed to make sure he knows her feelings. Emotional to be sure, but perhaps a bit too much dramatic licence was taken there.Where the movie hit home, though, was in the depiction of the growing moral qualms felt by the scientists who were working on the project. At first working willingly when it seemed as if there was a race to get the bomb before Nazi Germany, questions began to bubble when it was discovered that the Nazis had no real interest in the bomb. Then they were defeated and Japan didn't even have the capacity to make a bomb. The moral questions were very real, and very well depicted.Everyone involved with this did a credible job. I didn't think this was an outstanding movie, but it provided a glimpse at what was going on in Los Alamos, New Mexico in the early 40's - obviously a key period in human history.

Fat Man And Little Boy were the code names of the two atomic bombs that were dropped in reverse order on Nagasaki and Hiroshina. How these came to be and came to be in American hands is the story of this film.The terms by the way are the code names of two bombs fueled with plutonium and uranium. Fat Man was the plutonium bomb and that one was dropped on Nagasaki and Little Boy was the one used on HiroshimaThe film is primarily a conflict between General Leslie R. Groves of the United States Army and physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer who led the team of scientists who developed the bomb under Groves's direction. With two men from as widely divergent backgrounds as these were, conflict was inevitable.Paul Newman who all his life has been a disarmament activist plays General Groves. To his credit Newman does not play a man whose views he would very little in common with as any kind of caricature. Groves is a military man first and foremost with an engineering background. He wanted a combat command as trained military professionals would naturally want in this greatest of wars. But because of his background in engineering Groves got to head the Manhattan Project which was what the effort was code named. So be it, Newman is determined to make his contribution to the war effort count.Most of us first became acquainted with Dwight Schultz from the A-Team as H.M. Murdoch the pilot whose grip on reality is tenuous at best. If one was only acquainted with the A-Team, one might think that Schultz had a great future in comic roles.Instead Dwight Schultz is one of the best actors in the English speaking world with an astonishing range of dramatic parts since leaving that television series. J. Robert Oppenheimer in life was a complex man who recognized the dangers and benefits of atomic energy. The challenge of the problem also intrigues him. Later on Oppenheimer got into a real bind because of his left-wing political views and associates which everyone knew walking into the Manhattan Project. Some of the lesser roles that stand out are Bonnie Bedelia as Mrs. Oppenheimer, Natasha Richardson as Oppenheimer's Communist mistress whose affair with Oppenheimer got him in such a jackpot later on, and Laura Dern as a nurse at the Los Alamos site.But the best is John Cusack who as Michael Merriman is a composite of some real life scientists who might accurately be labeled as the first casualties of the atomic age. His scenes with Laura Dern, especially with what happens to him, take on a real poignancy.The debate over the bombs as the use put to them is still a matter of raging debate. Fat Man And Little Boy presents the facts and lets you decide what might have happened if an alternative use of them had been taken.