An interesting one might say, inevitable depiction of the birth of the Nuclear age (I had watched the very first treatment of the subject, THE BEGINNING OR THE END [1947], some years back), with the title a reference to the nicknames given the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and which hastened the end of WWII. For director Joffe', it was a follow-up to two impressive movies, both similarly involved in eliciting outraged public response to man's inhumanity to his fellow man THE KILLING FIELDS (1984) and THE MISSION (1986) which, like the film under review, was scored by Ennio Morricone; this, however, puts the culprits rather than their victims at center-stage while taking care to present almost every possible angle in the issue. Having said that, the film never quite moves one like it should and is awfully slow-moving to boot: at one point, the scientist ("The A-Team"'s Dwight Schulz[!], though surprisingly convincing) commissioned to work out the device tells his collaborator (John Cusack who, in a harrowing sequence, eventually becomes the first victim of the A-bomb) that they are not responsible for how their handiwork is ultimately put to use
which is utter crap if you ask me! As if to suggest that the people concerned lost something of their own along the way, we are treated to glimpses into both their domestic lives (Cusack falls for a nurse at the Los Alamos base, Laura Dern, whereas Schulz carries on relationships with two women simultaneously, wife Bonnie Bedelia and mistress Natasha Richardson with the suicide of the latter character coming across just as futile as the recent tragic death of the actress playing her!). For the record, I acquired the film late last year around the time of its leading man's own passing, Paul Newman; he appears as the General who oversees the invention and building of the bombs and, in that respect, was not afraid to tackle a role which was obviously unsympathetic (the last shot, in which he raises his closed fist in victory to Schulz being cheered by the crowds after the result of the bombings but retracting in shame after recognizing the scientist's broken spirit, is telling). By the way, I have to wonder whether the film was originally intended to be longer: the cast list at the end gives reasonable prominence to the name of 1970s character actor Ed Lauter, yet he is given no more than one fleeting shot in the released version!
Review of Fat Man and Little Boy
