The director and co-writers of 'The Killing Fields' condense the 19-month Manhattan Project into a confrontation between the freethinking scientific community and the more pragmatic military mind, represented on one hand by physicist Robert Oppenheimer and on the other by General Leslie Groves, who staked his career on not only getting the atomic bomb built but doing so before the war could end and thus make the project redundant. By necessity the film has to skim over too many fascinating moral debates; nineteen months is a lot of ground to cover, especially with so much valuable screen time wasted on romantic subplots. But even dodging some vital issues the film still presents a tense, tidy historical drama, and Paul Newman's performance as General Groves may be the best portrayal of a military man since George C. Scott ran roughshod over the krauts in 'Patton'. The title, by the way, refers to the nicknames of the A-bombs eventually used on Japan and not, presumably, to the film's two protagonists.
Review of Fat Man and Little Boy
