Oppenheimer

If you are going to watch a three-hour movie that is driven primarily by its dialogue, then that movie better be pretty darn good.

"Oppenheimer" is that kind of movie.

It's not often that a flick with minimum bursts of action and maximum bursts of speech hold my attention for any sustained period of time. The last movie I saw that was given primarily to the spoken word was Gary Oldham's portrayal of Winston Churchill in "The Darkest Hour." And before that, possibly "The King's Speech," which deals with the speech impediment of England's King George VI as he ascends to the throne at the dawn of World War II.

There might be a couple of others out there, but if there are, I can't think of them right now.

The common thread here, if you look close enough, is history, and primarily World War II history. That automatically captures my attention.

"Oppenheimer" details the adult life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, a theoretical physicist (he also theorized about black holes in the 1930s) who led a team of brilliant scientists toward the creation of the atomic bomb, thus forever altering the course of human history as well as the political landscape upon which that history travels.

Directed and written by Christopher Nolan (along with co-writers Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin), the movie moves briskly from scene to scene with precision and crispness, building anticipation as the weapon is slowly built from theory to reality.

The ensemble cast is spectacular, with pencil-thin Cillian Murphy in the lead role as a conflicted Oppenheimer; Emily Blount as his betrayed but steadfast wife Kitty; Florence Pugh as Oppenheimer's lover; Matt Damon as stalwart Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves, who brought Oppenheimer into the Manhattan Project; Kenneth Branagh as scientist Niels Bohr, and a host of other incredible actors, including Oscar winner Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody), Matthew Modine, Casey Afleck and Tom Conti as Albert Einstein.

But the standout performance, to my mind, was Robert Downey Jr. as politician Lewis Strauss, who serves as Oppenheimer's nemesis in a post-war atomic world. Downey will probably always be remembered for his role as Ironman in the Marvel franchise, but he superbly ascends to a higher role here as Oppenheimer's devious and paranoid antagonist. I almost didn't recognize him.

While the movie about the creation of a world-shattering weapon would seem depressing on the surface, the story – and the subsequent morality tale – is still fascinating. When the ultimate countdown ticks off (bets were placed by the scientists that the chain-reaction detonation would set the atmosphere on fire and thus destroy the world), the moment is breathless. And emotional.

When the explosion engulfs the movie screen (Nolan said there was no CGI involved), it's overwhelming. And thought provoking. This is the dawn of duck-and-cover society. This is us.

The movie's back story, as it were, was Oppenheimer's communist affiliations before the war, which led to a post-war congressional closed-door investigation as to whether or not he should keep his security clearance. He was denied.

Because we still live an a nuclear age, this movie offers relevance as well as critical history. Not many pictures can pull that off as well as this one.