The reviews are in for Christopher Nolan's latest film Oppenheimer. The new movie is one of 2023's most exciting releases thanks to Nolan's creative force and its star-studded cast. Cillian Murphy anchors Oppenheimer as the titular physicist, following previous collaborations with Nolan in films like Inception and Dunkirk. Murphy is joined by Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., and Florence Pugh, all playing real-life historical figures in Oppenheimer's orbit.
The embargo has lifted on critics sharing their full opinions on the movie ahead of the official Oppenheimer release date on July 21. Some found the movie a bit scattershot and say it doesn't necessarily add up to the sum of its parts over the course its three-hour runtime. However essentially everyone, including many of the aforementioned critics, agrees that it is a taut and exhilarating political thriller with a layered and thoughtful performance from Murphy at the center and could potentially go down in history as Nolan's masterpiece. Read excerpts from select reviews below:
Graeme Guttman, Screen Rant:
Nolan has been criticized for what some consider sterile filmmaking, asserting that he is more focused on the technical components of his movies than the human ones. Oppenheimer marries both — through intimate close-ups, Murphy communicates personal devastation with a dawning realization that he has created a new world. Nolan films heated technical conversations and devastating domestic squabbles like thrilling action scenes, imbuing each word, each facial tic with a sense of impending doom. Both strikingly personal and monumental in scale, Oppenheimer may be Nolan's greatest achievement.
Ross Bonaime, Collider:
Murphy is beautifully restrained here, and even though his actions are world-changing, we can feel the implications of Oppenheimer’s achievements simply through a look in Murphy’s eyes, or the way he hesitates in a sentence. After years of working with Nolan, Murphy's take on Oppenheimer will go down as one of the best performances ever captured by Nolan’s camera.
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian:
This is the big bang, and no one could have made it bigger or more overwhelming than Nolan. He does this without simply turning it into an action stunt – although this movie, for all its audacity and ambition, never quite solves the problem of its own obtuseness: filling the drama at such length with the torment of genius-functionary Oppenheimer at the expense of showing the Japanese experience and the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Owen Gleiberman, Variety:
It remains every inch a Nolan film. You feel that in the heady, dense, dizzying way it slices and dices chronology, psychodrama, scientific inquiry, political backstabbing, and history written with lightning — no mere metaphor in this case, since the movie, which tells the story of the man who created the atomic bomb, feels almost like it’s about the invention of lightning.
Pete Hammond, Deadline:
At three hours there is a lot of story to tell here, and Nolan condenses it nicely and really moves this along with the pace of the best thrillers.
Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post:
Only the brilliant mind behind “Memento,” “Inception” and the “Dark Knight” trilogy would conclude that a biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, could be both a morally complex, informative, gripping drama and a mind-blowing visual feast.
David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter:
Both a probing character study and a sweeping account of history, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a brainy, brawny thriller about the man who led the Manhattan Project to build the bomb that ended World War II. To dispense with the inevitable weapon of mass destruction metaphors, it’s more slow-burn than explosive. But perhaps the most surprising element of this audacious epic is that the scramble for atomic armament ends up secondary to the scathing depiction of political gamesmanship, as one of the most brilliant scientific minds of the 20th century is vilified for voicing learned opinions that go against America’s arms-race thinking.
Christopher Nolan has become one of the most widely renowned directors of the modern age. Ever since his sophomore feature Memento brought him worldwide acclaim and attention, the director has been more or less synonymous with cerebral and compelling filmmaking. Over the course of his career, he has already been nominated for five Oscars, for Dunkirk, Inception, and Memento.
Outside of his Oscar nominations, Nolan has also scored huge critical and commercial hits with the Dark Knight trilogy, which includes Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises. Although his movies are usually successful in one way or another, the director tends to work in one of two modes. He either favors high-concept epics like Inception, Tenet, and Interstellar or slightly smaller-scale psychological movies like Memento, Insomnia, and The Prestige.
Oppenheimer seems to have earned its early reputation by combining both of Nolan's modes. While presenting itself as a biopic and political thriller first and foremost, these reviews reveal that it doesn't sacrifice the big-ticket thrills and sweeping scope of his iconic epics. While it remains to be seen how audiences respond to it, this critical reaction could very well prove to be a portent of widespread love for the movie across the globe.
The embargo has lifted on critics sharing their full opinions on the movie ahead of the official Oppenheimer release date on July 21. Some found the movie a bit scattershot and say it doesn't necessarily add up to the sum of its parts over the course its three-hour runtime. However essentially everyone, including many of the aforementioned critics, agrees that it is a taut and exhilarating political thriller with a layered and thoughtful performance from Murphy at the center and could potentially go down in history as Nolan's masterpiece. Read excerpts from select reviews below:
Graeme Guttman, Screen Rant:
Nolan has been criticized for what some consider sterile filmmaking, asserting that he is more focused on the technical components of his movies than the human ones. Oppenheimer marries both — through intimate close-ups, Murphy communicates personal devastation with a dawning realization that he has created a new world. Nolan films heated technical conversations and devastating domestic squabbles like thrilling action scenes, imbuing each word, each facial tic with a sense of impending doom. Both strikingly personal and monumental in scale, Oppenheimer may be Nolan's greatest achievement.
Ross Bonaime, Collider:
Murphy is beautifully restrained here, and even though his actions are world-changing, we can feel the implications of Oppenheimer’s achievements simply through a look in Murphy’s eyes, or the way he hesitates in a sentence. After years of working with Nolan, Murphy's take on Oppenheimer will go down as one of the best performances ever captured by Nolan’s camera.
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian:
This is the big bang, and no one could have made it bigger or more overwhelming than Nolan. He does this without simply turning it into an action stunt – although this movie, for all its audacity and ambition, never quite solves the problem of its own obtuseness: filling the drama at such length with the torment of genius-functionary Oppenheimer at the expense of showing the Japanese experience and the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Owen Gleiberman, Variety:
It remains every inch a Nolan film. You feel that in the heady, dense, dizzying way it slices and dices chronology, psychodrama, scientific inquiry, political backstabbing, and history written with lightning — no mere metaphor in this case, since the movie, which tells the story of the man who created the atomic bomb, feels almost like it’s about the invention of lightning.
Pete Hammond, Deadline:
At three hours there is a lot of story to tell here, and Nolan condenses it nicely and really moves this along with the pace of the best thrillers.
Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post:
Only the brilliant mind behind “Memento,” “Inception” and the “Dark Knight” trilogy would conclude that a biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, could be both a morally complex, informative, gripping drama and a mind-blowing visual feast.
David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter:
Both a probing character study and a sweeping account of history, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a brainy, brawny thriller about the man who led the Manhattan Project to build the bomb that ended World War II. To dispense with the inevitable weapon of mass destruction metaphors, it’s more slow-burn than explosive. But perhaps the most surprising element of this audacious epic is that the scramble for atomic armament ends up secondary to the scathing depiction of political gamesmanship, as one of the most brilliant scientific minds of the 20th century is vilified for voicing learned opinions that go against America’s arms-race thinking.
Is Oppenheimer Really Christopher Nolan's Masterpiece?
Christopher Nolan has become one of the most widely renowned directors of the modern age. Ever since his sophomore feature Memento brought him worldwide acclaim and attention, the director has been more or less synonymous with cerebral and compelling filmmaking. Over the course of his career, he has already been nominated for five Oscars, for Dunkirk, Inception, and Memento.
Outside of his Oscar nominations, Nolan has also scored huge critical and commercial hits with the Dark Knight trilogy, which includes Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises. Although his movies are usually successful in one way or another, the director tends to work in one of two modes. He either favors high-concept epics like Inception, Tenet, and Interstellar or slightly smaller-scale psychological movies like Memento, Insomnia, and The Prestige.
Oppenheimer seems to have earned its early reputation by combining both of Nolan's modes. While presenting itself as a biopic and political thriller first and foremost, these reviews reveal that it doesn't sacrifice the big-ticket thrills and sweeping scope of his iconic epics. While it remains to be seen how audiences respond to it, this critical reaction could very well prove to be a portent of widespread love for the movie across the globe.