Oppenheimer (2023) Cold, dark and brooding, Oppenheimer misses the mark when it comes to narrative drama. Christopher Nolan’s $100 million summer blockbuster explores the making of the atomic bomb, and America’s tumultuous attempts to come to terms with what it unleashed.   Over three long hours, Nolan time-hops between the 1920s through to the 1950s as American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) develops the bomb and struggles with its moral and political fallout. Oppenheimer is brought on to the Manhattan Project by the US Army’s Leslie Groves (Matt Damon), and the story is woven with two complex love interests in Kitty Oppenheimer (Emily Blunt) and Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh).   Many of the post-war scenes centre on the jealousies and obsessions of Lewis Strauss (Robert Downie Jr.), chair of the US Atomic Energy Commission, as he seeks the Senate’s approval to join Eisenhower’s cabinet.   This is undoubtedly an all-star cast, but beyond the wry wit of Damon’s character, the ensemble inspired little feeling. Is this numbness an ingenious reflection of how most of us feel when trying to comprehend something so morally complex and shudderingly terrifying as nuclear weapons? That may be too generous.   The danger in biopics is that the meandering complexities of people’s real lives rarely lend themselves to excellent narrative cinema. By way of example, a line that jars most with the tone is when the President calls Oppenheimer a “cry-baby”. It felt limp and cheesy, yet a quick internet search later shows it is historically accurate that Truman said this. There’s an irony that if the best Hollywood writers were freed from the constraints of historical record, a more consistent tone could probably have kept the film on track.   Non-linear storytelling is Nolan’s bread and butter, but overall Oppenheimer’s sequencing leaves a lot to be desired. The fundamental flaw is the set-up of a rivalry between Oppenheimer and Strauss, where for much of the film it is not entirely clear what their conflict is even about.   The two main characters barely meet or interact on screen, leading to a frustrating absence of drama. Nolan has the skill to pull this off – he did so exquisitely with Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale’s rival characters in The Prestige – but he may have taken a time and space hop too far here, thawing any sense of friction between the characters.   Oppenheimer is packed with dialogue, but much of it is emotionally muted, faux scientific and essentially dull. Talking about science and showing how people work together in a lab might not sound like a winning recipe, but try telling that to the Oscar-winning writer of The Imitation Game, Graham Moore. The Imitation Game also uses flashbacks and flashforwards, but with a sense of purpose that makes the audience invest more in its main character.   Murphy’s Oppenheimer struggles to draw out the same emotion. Perhaps that is not surprising, given he is the father of the atomic bomb, but the lack of emotional connection to the main characters made it difficult to feel much when they faced tragedy or internal turmoil. Often cinema uses love or romance to help open up their main character, but in this Oppenheimer didn’t prioritise making the audience relate. Most of us aren’t so squishy and perfect as a Rom Com when falling in love, but most of us aren’t so grim and sad as Oppenheimer either.   The film is very America-centric, which may be a conscious choice given the themes of introspection (or lack of). When Oppenheimer is picturing the scenes of destruction caused by the dropping of the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he visualises them within an American lecture theatre. The Americanisation of trauma is reminiscent of the old Vietnam War films made in Hollywood, which can feel a little crass in our globalised world. The moral questioning could have been more powerful if the audience was confronted with the devastation in Japan itself.   Space to explore the moral dilemmas was denied to the audience, perhaps as a reflection of the self-denial that the main characters are experiencing. But while that allows the audience into Oppenheimer’s psyche, it does not necessarily make for compelling viewing. An interesting dynamic is the use of a black and white filter for the scenes furthest in the future, reflecting how the world had stepped backwards since the making of the bomb.   No audience member could walk away without being acutely aware that we live with the means for our own extinction. The themes of Oppenheimer are also timely as questions remain unanswered over who will regulate or control artificial intelligence.   A metaphor about getting carried away with our own abilities might be appropriate as Nolan indulges his love of gritty time-jumps at the expense of viewer satisfaction.

Blue Story (2019) A gut-wrenchingly brutal spotlight on south London’s postcode gang rivalries, Blue Story grabs you and won’t let you look away. Rapman’s (Andrew Onwubolu) big screen directorial debut packs a punch with its unflinching message on youth violence, telling the audience that every 14 minutes there is another knife crime in England and Wales. The core message of the film is aimed at young people themselves: violence is a cycle that must be recognised and broken. Blue Story follows best friends Timmy (Stephen Odubola) and Marco (Micheal Ward), who live on different sides of a postcode war. Growing up in the midst of gang rivalries, their relationship is torn apart after Marco is attacked by one of Timmy’s old friends. The film begins at a time of change, showing Timmy entering secondary school. Timmy’s mum sends him away from Deptford to a school in the neighbouring borough of Peckham, where he meets local boy Marco. This echoes Rapman’s own experience of growing up in Deptford but going to school in Peckham, crossing the invisible postcode border. Decidedly contemporary, Blue Story’s narrative is interspersed with grainy CCTV footage of real life youth violence. Even the coming together of Blue Story is uniquely modern, adapted from Rapman’s 2014 YouTube musical drama series of the same name. The film is bursting with homegrown talent, not least of all Micheal Ward whose performance as Marco earned him the BAFTA Rising Star Award. The soundtrack showcases south London rappers such as Giggs, RAYE, Krept and Konan, with drill and trap music setting the tempo between scenes. Despite some dialogue being a little too on the nose, stitching real London personalities into the fabric of Blue Story’s production gives it a natural authenticity. Revenge is a cross-cutting theme, but not in the linear tradition of The Revenant or Kill Bill where someone wronged sets out on a bloodthirsty quest for rough justice. Instead, it cuts both ways. The main characters are trapped in a cycle of vengeance that brings far more pain than satisfaction. Flashback scenes, while a blunt directorial instrument, are used to show the tragic descent into violence rather than celebrate the righteousness of it. The use of handheld cameras throughout puts the audience right there in the thick of the action. During his refreshingly unique ‘rap narration’, Rapman places himself physically in the scene, breaking the fourth wall to look the audience in the eye. He is our bridge into the brutal world he depicts, highlighting the sobering futility of it with an honesty that avoids preaching. Over and over, the bravado of male characters in Blue Story escalates into violence. Victims of this violence are so often left alone as their attacker flees the scene for fear of arrest. But this also means that only the audience is left to dwell on the harm they have caused. Rapman allows the camera to linger. This raw portrayal of contemporary London is so much more than West Side Story meets Kidulthood. Blue Story’s talented cast and experimental style makes a welcome contribution to the Shakespearean turf war genre. Rapman’s final rap narration is a direct appeal to young people who might be caught up in a similar situation to his characters. Powerfully and deliberately rooted in contemporary youth culture, Blue Story is above all a heartfelt plea for peace on our streets.