#MovieReview: Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan at his best [Watch]

What can one say about Oppenheimer that it doesn’t find the time to say itself across a sprawling three-hour canvas?

Weighty and dense, but moving at breakneck speed, the film bursts with the energy that it takes such pains to describe.

Christopher Nolan, modern cinema’s biggest director who wields the power to make just about anything he wants, is back and might be the best he’s ever been.

But despite his reputation as the man who can move worlds to create high concept setpieces – and the obvious setpiece that looms over a biopic about the mind behind the atomic bomb – Oppenheimer is more often an internal examination.

It is as much a movie about a man working within the levers of power to create, something Nolan clearly feels a kinship with, as it is about the bomb that changed history.

Most of Oppenheimer is as conventionally conversational as any given biopic.

There’s scientists problem solving an impossible challenge, powerful men deciding on a country’s fate and a reckoning with the decisions after the fact.

That it mirrors lesser movies in form but keeps the audience engrossed for most of its three hours is what makes Oppenheimer great.

It’s Nolan maturing into a director whose craft has never been in question, that has found the narrative propulsion to match the visuals.

And the craft is certainly back in full pomp, with beautiful photography, seamless editing in the first two hours and the ability to draw fantastic performances out of a murderer’s row of a cast.

Cillian Murphy is incredible as J. Robert Oppenheimer, imbuing the man with an undercurrent of confidence in his ability but utter doubt as to where it may take him.

Robert Downey Junior finally shows his chops again after putting on a superhero suit for a decade, and Matt Damon luxuriates in the first of his gruff older man roles.

This film would be worth watching for these three alone, but there is much more on screen that demands your attention.

The final hour denouement lets you sit with the characters as they are pulled apart, internally and from outsiders looking for their pound of flesh, and its success will be viewer dependent.

The rest, however, is a film in utter control of where it wants to go.

Rated 16 for Language, Nudity, Violence and Sex.
4.5/5.

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