--- title: "Oppenheimer" year: 2023 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/oppenheimer" fi1m_id: "oppenheimer" imdb_id: "tt15398776" tmdb_id: 872585 wikidata_id: "Q108839994" fi1m_score: 84 critics_score: 89 critics_reviews: 16 published: "2026-09-10" updated: "2026-09-18T08:37:41.367134+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Oppenheimer (2023) Directed by Christopher Nolan · 3h 01m · MPA R · Drama, History ## Identity Oppenheimer - **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/oppenheimer - **Type:** Film - **Fi1m ID:** oppenheimer - **IMDb ID:** tt15398776 - **TMDB ID:** 872585 - **Wikidata ID:** Q108839994 - **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15398776/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/872585, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q108839994 **Fi1m score: 84** · Critics 89 from 16 reviews *In a sentence:* Three hours of men in hats arguing in rooms, and the one explosion is the quietest thing in it > Christopher Nolan’s three-hour life of the man who built the bomb is his most disciplined film, and Cillian Murphy carries it without raising his voice. The hearings of the last hour grip less than the desert, and the sound swallows too many lines. ## Synopsis J. Robert Oppenheimer, a theoretical physicist with communist friends and a growing reputation, is recruited by General Leslie Groves to build an atomic bomb before Germany does. He gathers the country’s physicists in a town built from nothing in the New Mexico desert. Christopher Nolan tells the story from two hearings held years later: one in colour, in a small room where Oppenheimer’s loyalty is picked over by lawyers, and one in black and white, where Lewis Strauss faces a Senate committee. Cillian Murphy plays Oppenheimer, with Emily Blunt as his wife Kitty, Matt Damon as Groves, Robert Downey Jr. as Strauss and Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock. ## Review Christopher Nolan has written and directed a three-hour film about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who ran Los Alamos and built the atomic bomb, and he has told it as a pair of hearings rather than a life. In colour, Oppenheimer sits in a small room after the war while a lawyer, Jason Clarke’s Roger Robb, picks through his politics and his friendships. In black and white, Lewis Strauss faces a Senate committee and is asked about Oppenheimer too. Our verdict: this is Nolan’s most disciplined film, superbly acted and shot, and it is half an hour too long, nearly all of it in the third hour. Cillian Murphy plays Oppenheimer thin, hollow-cheeked and quiet. He talks fast when the subject is physics and hardly at all when it is himself. The performance is in the eyes, pale, wide and often fixed on something that is not in the frame; when Nolan wants to show what he is imagining he gives us sparks and ripples and light, and Murphy’s stare does the job better. Ellen Mirojnick dresses him in a hat and a suit that hangs off him. Robert Downey Jr. plays Strauss with none of his usual charm, as a small, careful, wounded man who never forgets a slight and never mentions one. Matt Damon’s General Leslie Groves is the relief, a large practical soldier who wants a bomb and does not want to hear about Marx. Emily Blunt has less to do as Kitty Oppenheimer than her billing suggests: she drinks and glares until one late scene in which the film remembers she can fight. Florence Pugh’s Jean Tatlock is a problem the film does not solve. She has a handful of scenes, mostly undressed, she is the only person Oppenheimer seems to love, and Nolan cannot find time to tell us who she was. Hoyte van Hoytema shoots in colour and in black and white and spends most of both on faces: a head filling the screen while its owner is asked a question he would rather not answer. Ruth De Jong’s Los Alamos is raw timber and dust knocked together on a mesa. Jennifer Lame cuts the strands against each other at a speed that turns a story about committees into a thriller, and the first two hours go quickly because of her. Ludwig Göransson’s score is almost continuous, strings climbing over a low pulse, and with the rest of the mix it buries lines we wanted to hear. The Trinity test is the reason to see this in a cinema. We stopped breathing when the count reached zero and did not start again for what felt like a minute. Nolan and van Hoytema show the fireball and nothing else, and Lame holds it with no music and no sound at all. Then the noise arrives, late, as it did in the desert, and we jumped with everyone else. Then the bomb is used, and the film has an hour left. A victory speech in a gymnasium, where the stamping of feet turns into something else, is the closest the film comes to showing what the weapon did. The rest is the two hearings, and they repeat. By the third hour we were tired, and then slightly cross about being tired, because we could see how much of the Strauss strand had been laid down to set up a payoff. It comes, we will not describe it, and it is smaller than the build. Nolan never leaves Oppenheimer’s head, so the film never goes to Japan. We watch his guilt at length and never see the dead. Nolan’s earlier films, [*Inception*](https://film.one/film/inception) (2010), *Dunkirk* (2017) and *Tenet* (2020), treated time as a puzzle. Here the same tricks are used on a real man, and the structure explains a character rather than a plot. Most critics have called it his best, and we would not argue for long. See it on the biggest screen available and accept that a tenth of the dialogue will go missing. At home you will hear more of it, and the Trinity test will not make you jump. It carries a 15 certificate and runs 181 minutes, and you will need patience for the last forty. *Fi1m score 84, published 10 September 2026.* ## What the critics say The reviews are uniformly favourable, though the warmth runs from steady approval to outright rapture. Almost every critic singles out Cillian Murphy, whose quiet, watchful turn in the title role is treated as the film’s foundation, with Robert Downey Jr.’s antagonist the most frequently named support. The Trinity test sequence draws the next largest share of praise, admired for its intensity and for being staged without computer effects, and several critics note that Nolan keeps three hours of men talking in rooms unusually gripping. The reservations are scattered rather than shared. The Guardian is troubled by the film’s silence on the Japanese victims of the bombings; The i Paper finds the female characters thin; Variety thinks the Trinity test disappoints and the film loses intensity after it; The Independent finds it cleverer than it is moving. A handful of critics call the structure dense and the whole too sprawling. Nobody dislikes it. ## Straight answers **Is Oppenheimer worth watching?** *Oppenheimer* is worth watching for anyone with the patience for three hours of men arguing in rooms, and we scored it 84. Cillian Murphy carries it quietly, the Trinity test is worth a cinema seat on its own, and the hearings of the last hour repeat themselves. Expect to lose a tenth of the dialogue under Ludwig Göransson's score. **How long is Oppenheimer, and what is it rated?** *Oppenheimer* runs 3h 01m and is rated R by the MPA in the US. It is a drama and history film. **Where can I watch Oppenheimer in the US?** *Oppenheimer* is streaming on Peacock, The Roku Channel and Amazon Prime Video in the US, and it is also available to rent from Amazon Prime Video from $3.99. Availability is checked daily; the links above go straight to each service. **How violent or frightening is Oppenheimer, and is it suitable for children?** *Oppenheimer* carries a 15 certificate in the UK and is an adult drama rather than a violent one. Its single explosion is shown as a fireball and nothing more, the dead in Japan are never seen, and Florence Pugh's scenes as Jean Tatlock are mostly undressed. It is not for children, and most teenagers will find three hours of committee rooms a long sit. **How does Oppenheimer compare to The Social Network?** *Oppenheimer* and [*The Social Network*](https://film.one/film/the-social-network) both tell a life through hearings, but Nolan's film is the graver and longer of the two and Fincher's the sharper. Murphy's Oppenheimer is quiet and guilty where Jesse Eisenberg's Zuckerberg is young and unapologetic, and Aaron Sorkin's dialogue is far easier to hear. Choose Nolan for scale and the desert, Fincher for wit and a tighter evening. **What should I watch after Oppenheimer?** After *Oppenheimer*, try [*The Social Network*](https://film.one/film/the-social-network) (2010, Fi1m 91): Another life told through depositions, with a younger and less apologetic monster. Then [*Dr. Strangelove*](https://film.one/film/dr-strangelove-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-bomb) (1964, Fi1m 93): The joke about the bomb that Nolan could not afford to make; and [*Hiroshima Mon Amour*](https://film.one/film/hiroshima-mon-amour) (1959, Fi1m 87): Resnais goes to the city Nolan leaves off screen, and stays there. ### Reviews we read (21) - **Empire**, Dan Jolin (5/5): The critic calls it a masterfully constructed character study from a great director operating on a new level, a film one must reckon with rather than merely watch. They single out Cillian Murphy’s compelling central performance and the intense, CG-free Trinity test sequence for particular praise. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/oppenheimer/) - **Radio Times**, Jeremy Aspinall (5/5): Nolan’s three-hour biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer fuses courtroom thriller elements with epic scope and Kubrick-like sequences; it is anchored by Cillian Murphy’s stunning, award-worthy lead performance. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movies/oppenheimer-review/) - **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (5/5): Nolan’s epic about the Manhattan Project is flawed but extraordinary in its scale and intensity. It singles out the Trinity test and Oppenheimer’s personal torment for praise while noting the film’s failure to address the Japanese victims of the bombings. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jul/19/oppenheimer-review-nolans-atom-bomb-epic-is-flawed-but-extraordinary) - **The Telegraph**, Robbie Collin (5/5): Nolan’s portrait of Oppenheimer is a triumph that feels like witnessing history being split open. It singles out Cillian Murphy’s performance, especially his eyes and presence, for particular praise. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2023/07/23/oppenheimer-review-christopher-nolan-cillian-murphy/) - **The Times**, Tom Shone (5/5): Christopher Nolan’s portrait of the obsessive genius is close to a modern masterpiece and an epic to rival Citizen Kane. It singles out the film’s moral and political complexities alongside Murphy’s performance. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/film/article/oppenheimer-is-an-epic-film-to-rival-citizen-kane-bfkzqkprh) - **Total Film**, Kevin Harley (5/5): The critic describes it as Christopher Nolan firing on all cylinders and a colossal achievement, an old-school epic with blockbuster verve and ideas-rich substance. They single out the viscerally intense Trinity test sequence and Cillian Murphy’s magnetically complex lead performance for praise. [Read](https://www.gamesradar.com/oppenheimer-review/) - **Variety**, Owen Gleiberman (Critics Pick): Cillian Murphy gives a phenomenal, multi-layered performance as Oppenheimer in a ruthlessly authentic and gripping historical psychodrama for much of its three hours. The Trinity test is a letdown visually, and the film loses intensity afterward as it turns to a meditation on the bomb’s meaning and Oppenheimer’s later role. [Read](https://variety.com/2023/film/reviews/oppenheimer-review-christopher-nolan-cillian-murphy-1235672159/) - **The Independent**, Clarisse Loughrey (4/5): Nolan’s best and most revealing work, a profoundly unnerving story treated as a mathematical puzzle with craftsmanship and imagination. It excels intellectually but falls short of deeper emotional resonance. [Read](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/oppenheimer-review-release-nolan-cillian-murphy-b2378587.html) - **The New Yorker**, Anthony Lane (75/100, inferred): The film is a hell of a sequence in its visual intensity, especially the Trinity detonation, with Cillian Murphy capturing Oppenheimer’s quiet inquietude and shock. It is structured around inquisitions and political paranoia that can feel glutted, though Downey Jr. delivers a standout performance. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/07/31/oppenheimer-movie-review-barbie) - **The i Paper**, Christina Newland (70/100, inferred): The critic finds the film breathtaking and singularly absorbing thanks to its sound and fury and Murphy’s masterful performance, but notes it is punctured by flaws including one-dimensional female characters. They praise the fascinating material and the might of the performances overall despite these issues. [Read](https://inews.co.uk/culture/film/oppenheimer-review-christopher-nolan-epic-write-women-2484242) - **Sight and Sound**: Nolan’s serious epic about the father of the atom bomb revolves around courtroom confrontations but is elevated by expressionistic flourishes and Cillian Murphy’s introspective performance, placing it among the director’s best. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/oppenheimer-nolans-dazzling-expressionistic-flourishes-bring-this-sombre-chamber-drama-life) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, David Rooney: The critic calls it a brainy, brawny thriller that functions as both a probing character study and a sweeping historical account of the Manhattan Project and its aftermath. They single out the scathing depiction of political gamesmanship and Cillian Murphy’s performance for particular praise. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/oppenheimer-review-christopher-nolan-cillian-murphy-robert-downey-jr-1235539375/) - **The New York Times**, Manohla Dargis (Critic's Pick): Christopher Nolan’s complex, vivid portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer is a brilliant achievement in formal and conceptual terms. It condenses a titanic shift in consciousness into three haunted hours as a drama about genius, hubris and error. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/19/movies/oppenheimer-review-christopher-nolan.html) - **Vulture**, Bilge Ebiri: The critic describes the film as a sprawling, rich tragedy of operatic grandeur centered on obsessive men and moral slippage. They highlight its uncompromising structure and the way it explores flawed humanity alongside genius despite many scenes of men talking in rooms. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/article/oppenheimer-review-a-tragedy-of-operatic-grandeur.html) - **/Film**, Chris Evangelista (9.5/10): The critic calls it one of the best movies of the year, an intense thriller disguised as a biopic with masterful pacing that keeps three hours of dialogue exciting. They single out how the film drops vast information succinctly and thrillingly while posing tough questions without easy answers. [Read](https://www.slashfilm.com/1343336/oppenheimer-review/) - **Collider**, Ross Bonaime (9/10): The critic calls it Nolan’s most mature film yet and a culmination of his career, with exceptional storytelling, editing, and tension-building. Cillian Murphy delivers one of the best performances in a Nolan film as the complex title character, supported by a stellar cast. [Read](https://collider.com/oppenheimer-movie-review/) - **Polygon**, Oli Welsh (90/100, inferred): Nolan's three-hour historical epic is his most complex, powerful, and human film yet, shifting focus from abstract concepts to people and the terrifying forces they unleash. The critic praises its rich source material, meticulous design, and gripping procedural elements centered on the Manhattan Project and its consequences. [Read](https://www.polygon.com/reviews/23800273/oppenheimer-review-christopher-nolan-cillian-murphy) - **Digital Spy**, Ian Sandwell (4/5): The critic praises it as a towering achievement and unforgettable experience with a career-best performance from Cillian Murphy, though notes it is a bit too sprawling for its own good. [Read](https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a44558844/oppenheimer-review-christopher-nolan/) - **The Ringer**, Adam Nayman (75/100, inferred): The review highlights the film’s massive scale and intricate double-helix structure, praising Murphy’s studied performance and Downey Jr.’s standout turn as a reptilian antagonist. It notes the ambitious scope can feel taxing and questions some horror elements. [Read](https://www.theringer.com/2023/07/21/movies/oppenheimer-review) - **Den of Geek**, Don Kaye (3.5/5): The critic finds it a magnificent but complicated film, praising the production, score, imagery, and performances (especially Murphy and Downey Jr.), but criticizing the dense, elliptical structure and failure to fully stick the landing in the final act. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/oppenheimer-review-christopher-nolan-nuclear-nightmare/) - **Deadline**, Pete Hammond: Nolan has crafted his most impressive achievement to date and the most important motion picture of 2023. The critic singles out the unusual first-person approach in the stunning screenplay, which effectively conveys Oppenheimer's moral conundrum and haunted perspective on the bomb's consequences. [Read](https://deadline.com/2023/07/oppenheimer-review-christopher-nolan-epic-thriller-atomic-bomb-frightening-brilliant-1235441243/) ## Details - **Director:** Christopher Nolan - **Director:** Christopher Nolan - **Writer:** Christopher Nolan - **Cinematography:** Hoyte van Hoytema - **Editor:** Jennifer Lame - **Music:** Ludwig Göransson - **Production design:** Ruth De Jong - **Costume design:** Ellen Mirojnick - **Producer:** Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas, Charles Roven - **Cast:** Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer; Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer; Matt Damon as Leslie Groves; Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss; Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock; Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence; Casey Affleck as Boris Pash; Rami Malek as David Hill - **Runtime:** 3h 01m - **Certificate (MPA):** R - **Release (the US):** 21 July 2023 - **Genres:** Drama, History - **Also in:** [Best Picture winners](https://film.one/collections/oscar-best-picture.md) (Winner, 2023); [BAFTA Best Film winners](https://film.one/collections/bafta-best-film.md) (Winner, 2023); [Golden Globe Best Drama winners](https://film.one/collections/golden-globe-drama.md) (Winner, 2023); [Films where the soundtrack is the real star](https://film.one/collections/soundtrack-is-the-star.md) - **Budget:** $100 million - **Box office:** $952 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiuSBWVdgLI ## Where to watch in the US - Peacock: streaming, uhd - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd - Amazon Prime Video: add-on, uhd - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, uhd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $14.99, uhd *Checked 2026-09-10.* Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, ES, FI, FR, GB, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IN, IS, IT, JP, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, TH, TR, UA, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 2024: Best Actor (won); Best Director (won); Best Picture (won); Best Supporting Actor (won) - BAFTA Film Awards 2024: Best Film (won) - Golden Globes 2024: Best Motion Picture – Drama (won) ## If you liked this - *The Social Network* (2010), Fi1m 91: Another life told through depositions, with a younger and less apologetic monster. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-social-network.md) - *Dr. Strangelove* (1964), Fi1m 93: The joke about the bomb that Nolan could not afford to make. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/dr-strangelove-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-bomb.md) - *Hiroshima Mon Amour* (1959), Fi1m 87: Resnais goes to the city Nolan leaves off screen, and stays there. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/hiroshima-mon-amour.md) - *Chernobyl* (2019): Physics meets politics on the other side of the Iron Curtain, in five episodes. - *The Right Stuff* (1983), Fi1m 86: Americans, machines and the desert again, with more jokes and better hair. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-right-stuff.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/oppenheimer