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Hal Hinson, Washington Post
Fat Man and Little Boy
The story of the extraordinary people who changed our world.
1989 · 2h 7m · PG-13
Drama, History, War
Directed by
Roland Joffé
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Fat Man and Little Boy
Overview
Assigned to oversee the development of the atomic bomb, Gen. Leslie Groves is a stern military man determined to have the project go according to plan. He selects J. Robert Oppenheimer as the key scientist on the top-secret operation, but the two men clash fiercely on a number of issues. Despite their frequent conflicts, Groves and Oppenheimer ultimately push ahead with two bomb designs — the bigger "Fat Man" and the more streamlined "Little Boy."
Director and cast
- Roland Joffé Director
- Paul Newman as Gen. Leslie R. Groves
- Dwight Schultz as J. Robert Oppenheimer
- Bonnie Bedelia as Kitty Oppenheimer
- John Cusack as Michael Merriman
- Laura Dern as Kathleen Robinson
- Ron Frazier as Peter de Silva
- John C. McGinley as Richard Schoenfield
- Natasha Richardson as Jean Tatlock
- Ron Vawter as Jamie Latrobe
- Michael Brockman as William "Deke" Parsons
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
50%
Tomatometer
Rotten
[Fat Man] is not resoundingly disastrous. That would imply a certain energy.
Desson Thomson, Washington Post
Rotten
Fat Man and Little Boy is a fiction based on the Manhattan Project, but it is thin and unfocused and hardly even suggests the enormous moral and practical questions that the scientists wrestled with in the New Mexico desert.
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
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